17- The Newspaper Office. [FEB. 



interests of your journal, you may command my services to the utmost. 

 I am never backward in obliging my friends. 



JOB. Really, Sir, you are very considerate ; but I am not altogether 

 without hopes of receiving another in time to give eclat to next Sunday's 

 publication. 



EDITOR. I sincerely trust you may not be disappointed. But, tell 

 me, have you made any recent additions to your establishment? In 

 other words, have you caught any fresh reporters ? 



JOB. No, we have had a bad season of late. The agitation of the 

 Union Question interferes sadly with these Irish exports. They are 

 kept at Dublin for the home market. But enough of such matters for 

 the present. I must now go and invent a burglary a seduction or two 

 and a diabolical murder, or my Sunday readers will grumble bitterly 

 at the dulness of my stock of intelligence. -\_Exit JOB ALLWORK. 



Enter a Member of Parliament. 



MEMBER. I have come, Mr. Editor, to pay a visit 



EDITOR {aside}. A manifest erratum. For visit, read visitation. * 

 You wish to see the Editor ? I am that unhappy man. Proceed, Sir, 

 I am all attention. 



MEMBER. Without further preface, then, my name is Edwin Daven- 

 dot, M.P. for the free and independent borough of Humbug. I made a 

 speech last night in the House, on the Currency Question, which I 

 Hatter myself was characterized by its profundity. 



EDITOR (aside}. No doubt: the chief characteristic of the bathos is 

 its profundity. 



MEMBER. Under these circumstances, I naturally anticipated a liberal 

 share of consideration from the morning papers. Judge then my horror 

 to say nothing of my disgust at finding myself thus cavalierly dis- 

 missed ' ' An hon. Member, whose name we could not learn, spoke a few 

 words on the Currency Question." Now the object of my present visit 

 is to request that you will do me the justice which your contemporaries 

 have denied, by inserting this little abstract {drawing six folio MS. 

 sheets from his coat-pocket} of my last night's speech in the columns of 

 your inestimable journal. Ministers will be in agonies at the perusal, 

 and you will have the satisfaction of possessing it exclusively. 



EDITOR (aside). So I fear. Really, Mr. Davendot, our columns at 

 present are so full, that 



MEMBER. You decline the honour ? 



EDITOR. Why, to tell you the truth, I 



MEMBER. Aye, out with it, let me hear the truth, if only by way of 

 novelty. Truth indeed ! as if an editor ever knew what it was ! Why, 

 Sir, a duck takes to the water, a leech to a horsepond, an alderman to a 

 turtle-feast, or a placeman to a sinecure, with infinitely less alacrity than 

 an editor to a falsehood. But am I really to understand that you decline 

 the insertion of my speech ? 



EDITOR. You have divined my intentions, Mr. Davendot, with ad- 

 mirable sagacity. 



MEMBER. Mighty fine, Sir, mighty fine. But let me assure you, Sir, 

 with all that freedom of debate which is the glorious privilege of a 

 British senator, that the honourable member for the free and indepen- 

 dant Borough of Humbug is not a man to be affronted with impunity. 



