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Show THE INTELLIGENT COMPOSITOR III) Occasional Wonders and Fault Overbalanced Over-balanced bjr III Good Ueeds. There are some things that the average aver-age printer cannot or will not do, and some that he both can do and does. The former are not nearly so numerous numer-ous as the latter, so they may be catalogued cata-logued before a schedule is attempted of his virtues. The average compositor says the San Francisco Chronicle, cannot be persuaded that there is such a word as "ingenuous." Ho is certain to mako it into -ingenious" at least nine times out of ten; and then, to restore the average between the u and the i, he is very likely to make "insidious" into in.-iduous," possibly misled by "deciduous," "de-ciduous," which he uniformly gets right. His pons asinorum, however, is 'consensus," which he will set up 'concensus" in spite of the united efforts ef-forts of writer, proof-reader and the whole staff of editors. The word "census" seems to carry him off his feet, and he lives and dies in the belief that the longer word is "census," with the "con" prefixed. Every printing office has what are called "stylo rules," which are intended intend-ed to bo followed as closely as possible A common, though not universal, rule is that figures are to be used instead of printing the numbers out at length, but this rule could hardly excuse the compositor for setting up the familiar line of the old hymn so that it read, "10,0110,000" (ten thousand thousand) "are their tongues, hut all their joys are 1," or for spoiling the editor's quotation from the song. "Meet Me in the Lano at Half Past Nine," by setting set-ting it up. "Meet Me in the Lane at y ::." One more illustration completes the category of his ordinary misdeeds. Whenever an attempt is made to quoto the celebrated chapter, "On the Snakes ! of Iceland," which is comprised in the words, "There are no snakes in Iceland," Ice-land," the compositor, no matter how legible his copy, will convert "Iceland'' "Ice-land'' into "Ireland," the St. Patrick legend being apparently more familiar to him than the history of Iceland. lint now let us see what the compositor compos-itor can do and doos every day of his life. He takes a manuscript, the chi- rography of which would make the lid of a Chinese tea chest blush with envy, translates it into the vernacular as ho goes along, corrects the spelling and grammar, and oftentimes the rhetoric, and turns it out, not as the author wrote it, but as he intended to write it He sets up better English than most men can write; he can detect errors rjt fact as well as of style; he can give the horse editor points on sporting luatters, and the religious editor on theology; he can appreciate even the merits of a discussion on the tariff, " and detect the fallacies In a profound leader on economics; and he can do more hard and Intelligent work in a given time, if he has to, than any other sort of handicraftsman. Setting off, then, his eccentricities and idiosyncrasies against his fund of general information, his knowledge of a wide range of subjects, and his ability to discriminate between good and bad literary work, it is surely no misnomer to call him the "intelligent coimosi-i coimosi-i tor." |