seated at their several desks--the Managing
Editor and the Night Editor about their duties; two or three men looking
over telegraph messages and getting them ready for the type-setters; two
or three men writing editorial, and other articles.

From this room we turn to the great room of the City Department. There is
the City Editor, in his little, partitioned-off room, writing an
editorial, we will suppose, on the annual report of the City Treasurer,
which has to-day been given to the public. At desks, about the great
room, a half-dozen reporters are writing up the news which they have been
appointed to collect; and another, and another, comes in every little
while.

[Illustration: FINISHING THE PLATE.]

Over there, is the little, partitioned-off room for the Assistant City
Editor. It is this man's duty, with his assistant, to prepare for the
type-setters all the articles which come from the City Department. There
are stacks and stacks of them. Each reporter thinks his subject is the
most important, and writes it up fully; and, when it is all together,
perhaps there is a third or a half more than there is room in the paper
to print. So the Assistant City Editor, and his Assistant, who come to
the office at about five o'clock in the afternoon, read it all over
carefully, correct it, cut out that which it is not best to use, group
all the news of the same sort so that it may come under one general head,
put on suitable titles, decide what sort of type to put it in, etc.,--a
good night's work for both of them. They also write little introductions
to the general subjects, and so harmonize and modify the work of twenty
or twenty-five reporters, as to make it read almost as if it were written
by one man, with one end in view.

The editors of the general news have to do much the same thing by the
letters of correspondents, and by the telegraphic dispatches.

While this sort of work goes on, hour after hour, with many merry laughs
and many good jokes interspersed to make the time fly the swifter, we
will wander about the establishment. Here, in the top story of the
building, is the room of the type-setters. Every few minutes, from
down-stairs in the Counting Room, comes a package of advertisements to be
put into type; and from the Editorial Rooms a package of news and general
articles for the same purpose. They do not trouble to send them up by a
messenger. A tube, with wind blown through it very fast, brings up every
littl