The office hours of the editor-in-chief are light, but his position is the hardest on the staff, for the responsibility of all the utterances of the paper falls upon him, and the care follows him from the office to his club, and from his club to his bedroom. He is never off duty. A private telegraph wire connects the office with his house, and questions and answers are flashing over it at all hours. If he seeks repose at his club, he has scarcely lighted his cigar and curled himself lip in an easy-chair when a "printer's devil" appears before him with proofs; if he goes to the opera, he is summoned from his box in the middle of the performance by a messenger with a note from the managing editor; he is called from the ballroom and the most fascinating of partners into an anteroom, where another "devil" is in waiting with more proofs; and when he draws the curtains around his bed and is falling asleep, the little telegraph instrument on his study table awakens him by its sharp tinklings, which impatiently demand advice from him in regard to the treatment of some momentous news which has come in since he left the office — it maybe the resignation of a ministry, a declaration of war, a speech by President Hayes, the death of a king, or a Russian victory on the Danube.

Between two and three o'clock in the afternoon be again reaches the office, where a crowd of callers are anxiously waiting for an audience with him among them being office-seeking politicians who want recommendations — which they will not get; philanthropists who want to enlist the influence of the paper in some scheme of Utopian form; authors who want puffs; unemployed journalists who want positions; and many others who want to make suggestions in regard to the policy of the paper, time general burden of all their business being in some "want." The editor closets himself immediately after running the gauntlet of these importunates, and opens his private mail, indorsing some letters, which are handed to his private secretary, and destroying many others. An usher then serves the cards of the callers upon him, some of whom are referred to the sub-editors, or to the managing editor, who stands in relation to the editor-in-chief as the captain of a flag-ship stands to an admiral, the executive officer being the day editor in charge; others are dismissed; and a few — a very few — are admitted. It is almost as easy to slide up hill as to obtain an audience with the chief editor of a metropolitan newspaper, whose sanctum is hedged in by a divinity which is not apparent in the proportions or the furniture of the modest apartment.

In personal interviews or in letters dictated to his secretary he communicates with all his principal assistants, giving them top-