_The Tribune;_
member of Congress in 1848-49; prominent as an anti-slavery
leader and supporter of the Union cause; nominated for
president by the Liberal-Republican and Democratic parties
in 1872, but defeated by Gen. Grant; published
"Recollections of a Busy Life" in 1868, and "The American
Conflict" in 1864-66.

I

THE FATALITY OF SELF-SEEKING IN EDITORS AND AUTHORS[19]

It only remains to me to speak more especially of my own vocation--the
editor's--which bears much the same relation to the author's that the
bellows-blower's bears to the organist's, the player's to the
dramatist's, Julian or Liszt to Weber or Beethoven. The editor, from
the absolute necessity of the case, can not speak deliberately; he
must write to-day of to-day's incidents and aspects, tho these may be
completely overlaid and transformed by the incidents and aspects of
to-morrow. He must write and strive in the full consciousness that
whatever honor or distinction he may acquire must perish with the
generation that bestowed them--with the thunders of applause that
greeted Kemble or Jenny Lind, with the ruffianism that expelled
Macready, or the cheerful laugh that erewhile rewarded the sallies of
Burton or Placide.[20]

[Footnote 19: Printed with the "Miscellanies" In the "Recollections of
a Busy Life."]

[Footnote 20: Henry Placide, an American actor born in Charleston, who
excelled in the parts of Sir Peter Teazle and Sir Anthony Absolute.]

No other public teacher lives so wholly in the present as the editor;
and the noblest affirmations of unpopular truth--the most
self-sacrificing defiance of a base and selfish public sentiment that
regards only the most sordid ends, and values every utterance solely
as it tends to preserve quiet and contentment, while the dollars fall
jingling into the merchant's drawer, the land-jobber's vault, and the
miser's bag--can but be noted in their day, and with their day
forgotten. It is his cue to utter silken and smooth sayings--to
condemn vice so as not to interfere with the pleasures or alarm the
conscience of the vicious--to praise and champion liberty so as not to
give annoyance or offense to slavery, and to commend and glorify labor
without attempting to expose or repress any of the gainful
contrivances by which labor is plundered and degraded. Thus sidling
dextrously between somewhere and nowhere, the able editor of the
nineteenth century may glide through lif