In this country everybody speaks.
An American is in his normal condition when he is making a speech.

He is born with "fellow-citizens" in his mouth, and closes his earthly life by saying, "One word more, and I have done." Speeches being so common, newspaper readers do not want a large supply, and so many of these utterances, intended to be immortal, drop into oblivion through that inexhaustible reservoir, the editorial chip-basket.
But there is a hovering of pathos over this wreck of matter.

Some of these wasted things were written for bread by intelligent wives with drunken husbands trying to support their families with the pen.

Over that mutilated manuscript some weary man toiled until daybreak.

How we wish we could have printed what they wrote! Alas for the necessity that disappoints the literary struggle of so many women and men, when it is ten dollars for that article or children gone supperless to bed! Let no one enter the field of literature for the purpose of "making a living" unless as a very last resort.