to speak-no man knew better when to hold his tongue-and accordingly he slily sent down to the 'gentlemen of the press' a slip of paper on which, in his bold round hand, were written the words: This fish won't bite!' After the eager reporter comes the flowery one, who has always been particularly great in small provincial towns, and who has at his command a stock of adjectives enough to make Lord Macaulay hide his diminished head. This gentleman is in his glory at a flower show, an execution, a funeral, or, in fact, whenever he has an opportunity of murdering the Queen's English. One specimen of this school, when writing about a flower show-which is always 'a horticultural and floral display'-said that it was 'illumined by cartloads of sunshine.' Another-a Liverpool worthy-in giving an account of somebody's funeral, observed that 'the body of the deceased gentleman was followed to the grave by a silent and deeply sympathising audience.' I have heard of a paragraph which, with forcible redundancy, was entitled 'funeral of the remains of a late deceased military officer;' and I have seen an account of a penny reading wound up with the remark that the entertainment was, upon the whole, the most mirth provoking and soul stirring which could be had for the money!' The worst thing about the flowery reporter is, that he has done so much to injure the English language. If he can find a fine word to express the same meaning as a plain one, he never hesitates to cast aside the latter; and if he hears of any barbarous invention of our transatlantic cousins, he straightway makes a note of it, and carefully makes use of it at the very first opportunity. His ideas, too, of the meaning of certain words are somewhat hazy. Thus, a fatal accident is constantly spoken of by him as 'a fatality,' and his adjectives are applied in such haphazard fashion that they might almost have been scattered over his 'copy' with a peppercaster. The quantity of bad French and Latin, too, which he lugs into all he writes, equals that made use of by a fashionable authoress twenty years ago. He has almost naturalised some foreign words amongst us, and has given many a slang term a permanent place in our language. Upon the whole, he is the most objectionable representative of the reporter's craft to be met with nowadays. The dissipated reporter belongs to quite another school. He was at one time too common both in town and country. Even now, he has not entirely disappeared; but, thanks to the improvement which has taken place amongst press-men generally, he is no longer looked upon as a type of the entire profession. In the good old days, however, every Eatanswill had a Tom Potts who was the glory of its bar-parlours, and the oracle of its market ordinaries. Poor jovial old Tom Potts! you were a sad dog in your day: seldom sober; with no high notions of the dignity of your calling, but with a strong inclination towards the cold meat and strong beer of those towards whom you ought to have preserved an attitude of dignified impartiality.' But you did your work on the whole faithfully and honestly, by no means disdaining, when news was scarce and your pencil at rest, to 'fill up your time at case,' or scour the town in search of advertisements. One Tom Potts of my acquaintance, after many a hairbreadth 'scape, came at last to an untimely end by falling across a door-step, and cutting his throat on the sharp iron foot-scraper. another, it is related that, upon one occasion when walking by the Thames, he fell in and disappeared beneath its waters. Friends came up, but could see nothing of him; one, however, wiser or better acquainted with his habits than the rest, seized a pint-pot, which some one in the party happened to have, and stretched it over the water at the end of a long pole. There was a moment's suspense, and Of then a hand was feebly raised from the river towards the glistening pewter. 'Ah,' said the knowing friend, I knew Tom couldn't resist that;' and straightway he plunged in and brought him out. Peace be to the ashes of the entire race. One cannot think of their failings without a kindly feeling; but they were a sad, disreputable set, and we may be thankful that their own favourite vices have killed them off so fast. I might extend this paper to an illimitable length with reminiscences of different reporters in town and country, and with repetitions of the many good stories current regarding them. Not to transgress, however, upon the patience of the most forbearing of editors, let me briefly describe the ordinary career of a reporter. He begins life most probably as the 'devil' in some small weekly paper office; is taught short-hand by the Tom Potts of the establishment; and when the latter has succumbed to innumerable 'goes' of whisky, succeeds to his post. From the weekly paper he works his way to one of the less important dailies; and from it in turn he passes to Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, or Liverpool, where the reporters are in all respects the equals of their metropolitan brethren. Possibly, he settles down now for life, |