that he meant no reference whatever to the memories of the future. The
force, originality, and beauty of his epithets were remarkable. In his
local reports suicides were always "determined" suicides, and their acts
were always "rash" acts. Among purists in the use of words the
employment of these adjectives has always been considered a delightful
and legitimate mode of discriminating between people who kill themselves
precipitately and those who use a considerable amount of caution, and
(so to speak) apply strychnine with one hand and the stomach-pump with
the other. SPIFFKINS used to report fires, murders, and police doings
generally in a quiet and genteel manner, and by the Superintendent of
Police he was as much beloved for the goodness of his heart as he was by
the city editor for the goodness of his grammar. Once upon a time
SPIFFKINS had the opportunity of trying his hand at dramatic criticism,
and adopted a startlingly new system, which consisted simply in telling
the truth. The consequence was that his newspaper obtained a great
reputation for high moral tone, and lost all its theatrical
advertisements. Even when SPIFFKINS wrote an original American comedy of
"contemporaneous human interest" (and which had had a previous run in
Paris of five thousand nights), and that comedy was brilliantly rejected
by a manager, SPIFFKINS never went back on his system of telling the
truth. Weaker critics would have let up on that manager lest it should
be thought that they abused him because he refused their plays. But not
so with SPIFFKINS. _His_ moral courage was too heroic to resort to so
mean a subterfuge as that, and to this day that manager believes that
the reason SPIFFKINS abused him is because he refused his play!
Sometimes SPIFFKINS threw a little light on subjects that were generally
misunderstood. For instance, he said that NILSSON was a "charming
mezzo-soprano," and declared that "RIP VAN WINKLE" was a more delightful
translation from the French than had been seen for many a day.
Occasionally SPIFFKINS eked out his salary by writing letters to the