the date of the ending of our
day's work. There, if we are pretty important, we should lead the
column, and take a two-line head, with a pendant "comb." This,
altogether, would announce to the passing eye that we went out (as the
poet, Edwin Arlington Robinson, puts it) in such or such a year of our
age, that pneumonia, or what not, "took" us, that we were a member of
one of the city's oldest families, that a family breach was healed at
the death of our sister, or the general points of whatever it is that
makes us interesting to the paper's circulation. We are likely to have
a date line and a brief despatch from Rome, or Savannah, or wherever we
happen to be when we shuffle off, stating that we have done so. This
to be followed by a "shirt-tail dash." Then begins a beautifully
dispassionate and highly dignified recital of the salient facts
connected with our career, which may run to a couple of sticks, or,
even, did our activities command it, turn the column.

Or, suppose for the sake of our discussion that your achievements have
not been quite of the first rank. You get a one-line head, a sub-head,
and a couple of paragraphs. Somebody has exclaimed concerning how much
life it takes to make a little art. Just so. How much life it takes
to make a very little obituary in the great city! Early and late, day
in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out, in the
sun's hot eye of summer, through the winter's blizzard, year after year
for thirty-six years you have been a busy practising physician. You
have lived in the thick of births and life and death for thousands of
hours. What you know, and have lived and have seen would fill rows of
volumes. You are a distinguished member of many learned societies,
widely known as an educator. You are good for about a hundred and
fifty words.

Perhaps not. Perhaps you were a person of rather minor importance.
You are, that is, you were, we will say, an astronomer, or you were a
mineralogist, or a former Alderman, or something like that. So you
call for a paragraph, with a head. Your virtues (and your vices) have
been many. You were three times married. As Mr. Bennett says of
another of like momentous history, the love of life was in you, three
times you rose triumphant over death. Goodness! what a novel you would
make. You call for a paragraph, with a head. All your clubs are given.

You are doing pretty well. Many of us, just somebodies but nobod