Campaigns of a Non-Combatant | Page 2

left Mr. Pratt, of the Newport Mercury, with an ostentation of

affront, and bade James Brady, the boatman, hoist sail and carry me
over to Dumpling Rocks.
On the grassy parapet of the crumbling tower which once served the
purposes of a fort, the transparent water hungering at its base, the rocks
covered with fringe spotting the channel, the ocean on my right hand
lost in its own vastness, and Newport out of mind save when the town
bells rang, or the dip of oars beat in the still swell of Narragansett,--I
lay down, chafing and out of temper, to curse the only pleasurable labor
I had ever undertaken.
To me all places were workshops: the seaside, the springs, the summer
mountains, the cataracts, the theatres, the panoramas of islet-fondled
rivers speeding by strange cities. I was condemned to look upon them
all with mercenary eyes, to turn their gladness into torpid prose, and
speak their praises in turgid columns. Never nepenthe, never
abandonne, always wide-awake, and watching for saliences, I had gone
abroad like a falcon, and roamed at home like a hungry jackal. Six
fingers on my hand, one long and pointed, and ever dropping gall; the
ineradicable stain upon my thumb; the widest of my circuits, with all
my adventure, a paltry sheet of foolscap; and the world in which I
dwelt, no place for thought, or dreaminess, or love-making,--only the
fierce, fast, flippant existence of news!
And with this inward execration, I lay on Dumpling Rocks, looking to
sea, and recalled the first fond hours of my newspaper life.
To be a subject of old Hoe, the most voracious of men, I gave up the
choice of three sage professions, and the sweet alternative of idling
husbandry.
The day I graduated saw me an attaché of the Philadelphia Chameleon.
I was to receive three dollars a week and be the heir to lordly prospects.
In the long course of persevering years I might sit in the cushions of the
night-editor, or speak of the striplings around me as "my reporters."
"There is nothing which you cannot attain," said Mr. Axiom, my
employer,--"think of the influence you exercise!--more than a

clergyman; Horace Greeley was an editor; so was George D. Prentice;
the first has just been defeated for Congress; the last lectured last night
and got fifty dollars for it."
Hereat I was greatly encouraged, and proposed to write a leader for
next day's paper upon the evils of the Fire Department.
"Dear me," said Mr. Axiom, "you would ruin our circulation at a wink;
what would become of our ball column? in case of a fire in the building
we couldn't get a hose to play on it. Oh! no, Alfred, writing leaders is
hard and dangerous; I want you first to learn the use of a beautiful pair
of scissors."
I looked blank and chopfallen.
"No man can write a good hand or a good style," he said, "without
experience with scissors. They give your palm flexibility and that is
soon imparted to the mind. But perfection is attained by an alternate
use of the scissors and the pen; if a little paste be prescribed at the same
time, cohesion and steadfastness is imparted to the man."
His reasoning was incontrovertible; but I damned his conclusions.
So, I spent one month in slashing several hundred exchanges a day, and
paragraphing all the items. These reappeared in a column called "THE
LATEST INFORMATION," and when I found them copied into
another journal, a flush of satisfaction rose to my face.
The editor of the Chameleon was an old journalist, whose face was a
sealed book of Confucius, and who talked to me, patronizingly, now
and then, like the Delphic Oracle. His name was Watch, and he wore a
prodigious pearl in his shirt-bosom. He crept up to the editorial room at
nine o'clock every night, and dashed off an hour's worth of glittering
generalities, at the end of which time two or three gentlemen, blooming
at the nose, and with cheeks resembling a map drawn in red ink,
sounded the pipe below stairs, and Mr. Watch said--
"Mr. Townsend, I look to you to be on hand to-night; I am called away

by the Water-Gas Company."
Then, with enthusiasm up to blood-heat, aroused by this mark of
confidence, I used to set to, and scissor and write till three o'clock,
while Mr. Watch talked water-gas over brandy and water, and drew his
thirty dollars punctually on Saturdays.
So it happened that my news paragraphs, sometimes pointedly turned
into a reflection, crept into the editorial columns, when water-gas was
lively. Venturing more and more, the clipper finally indited a leader;
and Mr. Watch, whose nose water-gas was reddening, applauded me,
and told me in his sublime way, that, as a