branned

Updated: May 13, 2025

They were the reporters of the press the gamins and good fellows of literature; fellows of inexhaustible resources, who carry their wits literally at their fingers' ends; who can do more than extract sunbeams from cucumbers; for they can make up thrilling facts out of nothing; who can thread their way through a crowd where a tapeworm would be squeezed to death; whose writing desk is usually another man's back; and who sketch out a much better speech between an orator's shoulder blades than he is making in front; whose written language is a perplexity compared with which Greek is a relaxation and Sanscrit a positive amusement; who deal in adjectives, and know their precise value, and how to administer them, as an apothecary knows the drugs that are boxed and bottled on his shelves; who are less men than parts of an enormous mill grinding out grist to be branned and bolted in the editorial rooms, made into food in the printing office and press vault, and served up hot for the public's breakfast next morning.

John Bell Bouton - Round the Block