the men who own
it--which was Tom's question: I think that that "depends" a great deal on
the state of trade, on the state of politics, and on the degree to which
the paper will, or will not, scruple to do mean things. A great many
papers would pay better, if they were meaner. It would be a great deal
easier to make a good paper, if you did not have to sell it. When, then,
Jonathan shall have become a minister, he doesn't want to bear down too
hard on a "venal press" in his Fast Day and Thanksgiving sermons.
Perhaps, by that time, Tom will be able to explain why.

"_How, now, is this paper made?_" "But," interrupts Jonathan, "before
they make it, I should like to know where they get the 100,000 words to
put into it; I have been cudgeling my brains for now two weeks to get
words enough to fill a four page composition--say 200 words, _coarse_."

The words which are put into it are, besides the advertisements, chiefly:
1. News; 2. Letters and articles on various subjects; 3. Editorial
articles, reviews, and notes; 4. Odds and ends.

The "_letters and articles on various subjects_" come from all sorts of
people: some from great writers who get large pay for even a brief
communication; some from paid correspondents in various parts of the
world; some from all sorts of people who wish to proclaim to the world
some grievance of theirs, or to enlighten the world with some brilliant
idea of theirs--which generally loses its luster the day the article is
printed. A large proportion of letters and articles from this last class
of people get sold for waste-paper before the printer sees them. This is
one considerable source of income to the paper, of which I neglected to
tell Tom.

[Illustration: A CONTRIBUTOR TO THE WASTE-PAPER BASKET.]

As for the "_odds and ends_"--extracts from other papers, jokes, and
various other scraps tucked in here and there--a man with shears and
paste-pot has a good deal to do with the making of them. If you should
see him at work, you would want to laugh at him--as if he were, for all
the world, only little Nell cutting and pasting from old papers, a
"frieze" for her doll's house. But when his "odds and ends," tastefully
scattered here and there through the paper, come under the reader's eye,
they make, I am bound to say, a great deal of very hearty laughter which
is not that laughter of ridicule which the sight of him at his work might
excite.

[Illustration: OFFICE OF THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF.]

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