Memoirs of an editor : fifty years of American journalism / Edward P. Mitchell.

"THE NEWSPAPER MAN'S NEWSPAPER"

131

his own verbal propensities upon the copy, he touched
it only when necessary, and invariably to improve.
Through the open doorway that stood between his
desk and mine I saw a look of slight surprise come into
his countenance. He reached for his fat blue pencil and
turned partly toward me with what seemed to be a gently
reproachful glance; but before the look arrived at its destination, a couple of yards away, I was behind a wide-open
newspaper from the pile of exchanges. When this screen
was lowered again the editor was seen diligently engaged
in breaking up the Evarts paragraph into decently brief
sentences, changing commas into periods, introducing
initial capitals and altering the syntax to suit. I thought
of Lord Timothy Dexter's unpunctuated pamphlet, with
the last pages containing an assortment of points of all
kinds to be peppered in by the reader according to preference. But of a sudden Mr. Dana's blue pencil halted. He
had come to the last lines of the continuously flowing
paragraph, wherein the distinguished orator was notified
that any attempt to bridge the gap between this Centennial
and the next with a single sentence, however carefully constructed and judiciously declaimed, must in the simple nature
of things and in consequence of the exiguity of human existence
result, however disguised, in a decided though philosophically
interesting failure.
My censor pushed back his chair and came through the
doorway with his characteristic stride, firm as a seacaptain's on the quarter-deck. There was a twinkle in
the eyes behind the gold-bowed spectacles as he remarked:
"Mitchell, I'm afraid you're a humbug. I guess you'd
better get another proof and make your own corrections.

Evarts will enjoy it."
The other little incident was that of the red apple.
Like Horace Greeley, his former companion in the making
of the Tribune, Dana cherished especially his relations