Читать книгу Seeking His Fortune, and Other Dialogues онлайн

23 страница из 49

Ed. (blandly). Three dollars a year.

A. E. I do not mean the subscription price of the paper, but how much do you pay your poetical contributors?

Ed. We—ahem—that is, our friends are kind enough to make us a free gift of their productions in that line.

A. E. (insinuatingly). But don’t you pay for superior poetry? I have here a poem which I would like to see transferred to your columns (passes manuscript to him).

Ed. (taking the poem). Seventy-seven stanzas! That would be too long for our columns. Couldn’t you shorten it?

A. E. Not without marring its symmetrical proportions. But I will write another and a shorter one soon, which will perhaps suit you better.

Ed. Thank you, Miss Ellis. That will undoubtedly be better suited to our columns.

(Exit A. E., L.)

(Enter, L., George Crane excitedly.)

George Crane. Sir, don’t you regard it as a part of an editor’s duty to unmask villany and expose it to the world?

Ed. Certainly, sir.

G. C. Then I should like to furnish you with some information respecting a neighbor of mine, named Henry Perkins. He is a hypocrite, sir! He professes a good deal, but secretly practises petty acts of meanness. I have every reason to believe that he beats his wife; and he has been suspected of robbing his neighbor’s hen-roosts. Just write an article touching him up, and I’ll subscribe to your paper for a year.