Advice to a Young Editor

Is, I'm fond of giving advice. In this respect I am peculiar. I suppose this comes of my generous nature. If at any time you are in doubt and perplexity, no matter what the cause, just apply to me and I shall certainly give you most valuable and timely help.

In the first place, dismiss at once from your mind the idea that editing a weekly religious paper is a difficult work. Nothing is easier. I am acquainted with a large number of persons who quite agree with me. We know just how to do it, and we think it is a great deal easier than preaching or school teaching—easier, even, than raising the tunes in church regularly on Sundays. Don't disturb yourself by false and exaggerated notions of the difficulty of the work. Don't magnify your mole-hill into a mountain. All you have to do is, to put in the paper all that you ought, and in the waste-basket, all that you ought'nt to put in the paper. All that you have to do is to please everybody, suit everybody, and offend nobody. Adapt your paper to every variety of taste, and notion, and whim. Do just what everybody asks you to do. Make nobody angry; mortify nobody. In other words, let everybody edit your paper, and you will soon see how quickly you will get along. You will have an easy time, as long as the paper lives.

But I must particularize. You must be careful how you handle obituaries. There is danger in them. There is dynamite in them. They'll hurt you if you don't mind. Make no unnecessary changes. Use syntax, &c., in them, but at your peril, as you value your peace of mind and the sweets of your position, don't shorten the grave productions. No matter though you may never have heard of the remarkable deceased, let him have the benefit of post mortem celebrity. Let his biographer tell how many wives he had, and the precise number of his children, the places where he lived, and how long at each, the disease that took him off, and the exact hour of his departure. Those, and other facts, are highly important and intensely interesting. People will read them over and over again, imprint them indelibly upon their memories, and enshrine them in their hearts. They will shed tears over the unknown dead, and paste his obituary in their scrap books.

You must be sure to publish serial articles. Let each number be at least a column and a half long; let the numbers run on ad infinitum. If the subjects are well chosen, and the treatment pains-taking, minute and expansive, the interest of your readers will grow with every new number. Take, for instance, the Presiding Elder's office, or the copious history of some obscure church, and if it is for the most part a list of names, the larger the better. Make serial articles a feature of your paper, and brilliant success awaits you.

Deal freely in offensive personalities, and allow your correspondents large liberty in this particular. Let your readers see how angry a good man can get, and yet sin not; how sweetly a good man can smile, while cutting to the bone: how cool and calm a good man can be, while he is throwing stones and mud at another good man. You don't know how flings, and thrusts, and abuse will freshen and enliven your paper.

Well, I think I have given you as much advice as you need at present. I shall take pleasure in sending you some more at another time.