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s- 10
THE HESPERIAN
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student has never read anything. His read
ing has been altogether limited to a few
hundred pages of the classics and sciences.
All art, all poetry, all higher culture ho has
put behind him like the monks of old, who
called them vain delusions of the flesh and
hid from them by crawling into fox holes
down in the Thebaid. The glorious art of
his own century the "good student" leaves
forever unnoticed and unknown, and goes
back to pore over the labored characters upon
stone slabs and seals, away back in the art
primers of the world. The great poets of
his own century are scorned by him, while
with care and patience he deciphers the
broken accents that fell from. the trembling,
uncertain lips of the race in its childhood.
There is an old legend that once in the dark
ages a friar set out for Palestine to find the
lonely sepulchre and see the bones of Christ.
As the man crawled on his knees toward the
holy tomb, Christ, with infinite pity for his
misguided eal, appeared in flesh and blood,
surrounded by all his glory as it had never
been permitted the eye of man to look upon
him before, and standing before the door of
the tomb stretched out his arm to the pil
grim. But the friar, whose eyes, perchance,
were dimmed by much seeking for bones,
saw only a man between him and his prize,
and he struck at his Lord with his sword and
went down into the sepulchre and caught the
dust to his bosom.
It is a world wide custom among journals
of every description to be continually find
ing fault with the printers. If their editor
ials have no sense, their locals no authentic
ity, their poetry no meter, they say, "typo
graphical error" and swear at the printers.
Now the truth is, it is very seldom the prin
ter's fault. If all the editors and contribu
tors of a paper knew how to spell and
punctuate and write good- grammar, the
printer's life would be a bed of roses, but it
is absurd to expect a printer to correct the
spelling of names that he has never seen be
fore, to punctuate sentences that have neither
subjects, predicates, nor clause modifiers,
and at the same time to wrestle with the
awful mysteries of the usual literary hand
writing. There are some hand writings, by
the way, that must haunt the compositors in
their sleep. One wonders if Shakespeare's
compositor can rest even in his grave. One
thing is sure, if printers are sent to a warm
country for profanity, the men who write
bad copy ought to go right along with them.
Myself, 1 am too far gone in the ways of evil
to change, but let me beseech all editors and
contributors to-be, if you write a good, legi
ble, conventional hand, donH change it
for the most "literary" and "characteristic"
hand in the world. Have regard for the
immortal soul of your printers and write
English script. On the whole it seems to
me that printers are a remarkably good lot
surely their sufferings and woes are enough
to justify them in being much worse men
than they are. They are expected to get
forty pages into twenty, or expand five to
twenty, as the editor's muse may bo gracious
or coy. They are expected to make sense
of rot and poetry of doggerel. They are
bossed about by people who have never been
inside of a printing office before, and dic
tated to by youths who have been journalists
exactly one week. It is by the grace and
patience of the printers that all great books
come into the world. The men who set up
"Tho Sorrows of "Werter" must have suf
fered infinitely more travail of soul than the
man who wrote it, and it has been said
of Heine that his poetry broke the hearts of
many women and many printers.
TO STUDENTS.
The Hesperian and World Herald deliv
ered at your room for sixty-five cents per
month in advance. Give your name to the
business managers.
One of the few beneficial results of the
present financial stringency has been tho re
duction in prices in upholstering. You get
hard times prices at Rothschild's, 126 No.
12th street, Burr Block.
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