Roundabout Papers - Penn State University

Roundabout PapersNow you see what I mean by a thorn. Here is the caseput with true female logic. “I am poor; I am good; I amill; I work hard; I have a sick mother and hungry brothersand sisters dependent on me. You can help us if youwill.” And then I look at the paper, with the thousandthpart of a faint hope that it may be suitable, and I find itwon’t do: and I knew it wouldn’t do: and why is thispoor lady to appeal to my pity and bring her poor littleones kneeling to my bedside, and calling for bread whichI can give them if I choose? No day passes but thatargument ad misericordiam is used. Day and night thatsad voice is crying out for help. Thrice it appealed tome yesterday. Twice this morning it cried to me: and Ihave no doubt when I go to get my hat, I shall find itwith its piteous face and its pale family about it, waitingfor me in the hall. One of the immense advantageswhich women have over our sex is, that they actuallylike to read these letters. Like letters? O mercy on us!Before I was an editor I did not like the postman much:—but now!A very common way with these petitioners is to beginwith a fine flummery about the merits and eminentgenius of the person whom they are addressing. Butthis artifice, I state publicly, is of no avail. When I seethat kind of herb, I know the snake within it, and flingit away before it has time to sting. Away, reptile, to thewaste-paper basket, and thence to the flames!But of these disappointed people, some take their disappointmentand meekly bear it. Some hate and holdyou their enemy because you could not be their friend.Some, furious and envious, say: “Who is this man whorefuses what I offer, and how dares he, the conceitedcoxcomb, to deny my merit?”Sometimes my letters contain not mere thorns, butbludgeons. How are two choice slips from that nobleIrish oak, which has more than once supplied alpeensfor this meek and unoffending skull:—46