The People I've Smiled with Recollections of a Merry Little Life

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1889 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXI. Newspaper Men Are Reliable Smilers.--John CockerIll.--General Sherman Explains.--Some Of CockerIll's Yarns.--Amos Cummings.--Some Of His Stories.--Joe Howard Brings Down The House.--Willie WinTer.--Henry Guy Carleton On Commercial TravelErs.--Bob Morris.--Joe Clarke.--John Reed.--Will Starrs.--George Williams.--The Press Club.--The Fellowcraft. Among the men who can always be depended upon to smile with a man and say the best things at the shortest notice, the journalists of New York City are pre-eminent. It takes a great deal of good stuff to make one journalist, but after the work is done the results are so admirable that the reader would not object to spoiling a hundred or so ordinary beings for the sake of turning out one first-class newspaper man. The qualifications of a man in a prominent position in journalism are so numerous that it would be hard to mention and classify them. Every American thinks himself able to edit a newspaper, and I don't know that many of them are mistaken; but among foreigners I cannot recall at this instant more than two who would be equal to the demands of the New York press were they not otherwise engaged at the present time: one is the Pope and the other is Bismarck. To name all the clever fellows who are supplying the world with news, yet find time to be cheerful with any half-way decent fellow who comes along, would take more space than the entirety of this book, even if the names were set in double columns in directory style. Of course they are riot all in New York. I never yet reached the town that had a newspaper of any account without finding at least one good fellow of the journalist fraternity, but naturally I am best acquainted with those who say things through the medium of the press of the metropol...