LIFE IN THE “HAWKEYE” SANCTUM.

THE Hawkeye has just got into its new editorial rooms, and it is proud to say it has the finest, most comfortable, complete, and convenient editorial rooms in America. They are finished off with a little invention which will be of untold value to the profession of journalism when it is generally adopted; and we know that it will rapidly come into universal use as soon as its merits are understood and appreciated. We believe it is fully equal, in all that the term implies, to the famous Bogardess Kicker, less liable to get out of order, and less easily detected by casual visitors. It is known as “Middlerib’s Automatic Welcome.” The sanctum is on the same floor as the news-room, being separated from it by a partition, in which is cut a large window, easily opened by an automatic arrangement. The editor’s table is placed in front of that window, and near the head of the stairs; and on the side of the table next the window, directly opposite the editor, the visitor’s chair is placed. It has an inviting look about it, and its entire appearance is guileless and commonplace. But the strip of floor on which that chair rests is a deception and a fraud. It is an endless chain, like the floor of a horse-power, and is operated at will by the editor, who has merely to touch a spring in the floor to set it in motion. Its operation can best be understood by personal inspection.

One morning, soon after the “Middlerib Welcome” had been placed in position, Mr. Bostwick came in with a funny story to tell. He naturally flopped down into the chair that had the strongest appearance of belonging to some one else, and began in his usual happy vein: “I’ve got the richest thing—oh! ah, ha, ha!—the best thing—oh, by George! I can’t—oh, ha, ha, ha! Oh! it’s too good! Oh, by George, the richest thing! Oh! it’s too loud! You must never tell where you got—oh, by George, I can’t do it! It’s too good! You know—oh, ha, ha, ha, oh, he, he, he! You know the—oh, by George, I ca—” Here the editor touched the spring, a nail-grab under the bottom of the chair reached swiftly up and caught Mr. Bostwick by the cushion of his pants, the window flew up, and the noiseless belt of floor gliding on its course bore the astonished Mr. Bostwick through the window out into the news-room, half-way down to the cases, where he was received with great applause by the delighted compositors. The window had slammed down as soon as he passed through; and when the editorial foot was withdrawn from the spring and the chair stopped and the nail-grab assumed its accustomed place, young Mr. Bostwick found himself so kind of out of the sanctum, like it might be, that he went slowly and dejectedly down the stairs, as it were, while amazement sat upon his brow, like.

The next casual visitor was Mr. J. Alexis Flaxeter, the critic. He had a copy of the Hawkeye in his hand, with all the typographical errors marked in red ink, and his face was so wreathed in smiles that it was impossible to tell where his mouth ended and his eyes began. He took the vacant chair, and spread the paper out before him, covering up the editorial manuscript. “My keen vision and delicate sense of accuracy,” he said, “are the greatest crosses of my life. Things that you never see are mountains in my sight. Now here, you see, is a——” The spring clicked softly, like an echo to the impatient movement of the editor’s foot, the nail-grab took hold like a bulldog helping a Burlington troubadour over the garden fence, the chair shot back through the window like a meteor, and the window came down with a slam that sounded like a wooden giant getting off the shortest bit of profanity known to man; and all was silent again. Mr. Flaxeter sat very close to the frosted window, staring blankly at the clouded glass, seeing nothing that could offer any explanation of what he would have firmly believed was a land slide, had he not heard the editor, safe in his guarded den, softly whistling, “We shall meet but we shall miss him.”

Then there was a brief interval of quiet in the sanctum, and a rustling of raiment was heard on the stairs. A lovely woman entered, and stood unawed in the editorial presence. The E. P., on its part, was rather nervous and uncomfortable. The lovely woman seated herself in the fatal chair. She slapped her little gripsack on the table, and opened her little subscription book. She said: “I am soliciting cash contributions—strictly, exclusively, and peremptorily cash contributions—to pay off the church debt, and buy an organ for the Mission Church of the Forlorn Strangers, and I expect——.” There are times when occasion demands great effort. The editor bowed his head, and, after one brief spasm of remorse, felt for the secret spring. The window went up like a charm; the reckless nail-grab hung back for a second, as if held by a feeling of innate delicacy, and then it shut its eyes and smothered its pity, and reached up and took a death-like hold on a roll of able and influential newspapers and a network of string and tape, and the cavalcade backed out into the news-room with colors flying. The chair stopped just before the familiar spirit who was washing the forms; and, as the lovely woman gazed at the inky face, she shrieked: “Merciful heavens, where, where am I?” and was borne down the gloomy stairway unconscious; while the printers whose cases were nearest the wicked window heard the editor singing, as it might be to himself, “Dearest sister, thou hast left us.”

An hour of serenity and tranquillity in the editorial room was broken by a brisk, business-like step on the stairs; the door flew open with a bang that shot the key half-way across the room, and a sociable-looking, familiar kind of a stranger jammed into the chair, slapped his hat over the ink-stand, pushed a pile of proof, twenty pages of copy, a box of pens, the paste-cup, and a pair of scissors off the table to make room for the old familiar flat sample case, and said, in one brief breath: “I am agent for Gamberton’s Popular Centennial World’s History and American Citizens’ Treasure Book of Valuable Information sold only by subscription and issued in thirty parts each number embellished with one handsome steel-plate engraving and numerous beautifully executed wood-cuts no similar work has ever been published in this country and at the exceedingly low price at which it is offered $2 per vol——.”

The spring clicked like a pistol-shot, the window went up half-way through the ceiling, the nail-grab took hold like a three-barreled harpoon, and the column moved on its backward way through the window, down through the news-room past the foreman, standing grim and silent, by the imposing stone, past the cases, vocal with the applause and encouraging and consolatory remarks of the compositors, on to the alley windows, over the sills—howling, yelling, shrieking, praying, the unhappy agent was hurled to the cruel pavement, three stories below, where he lit on his head and plunged through into a cellar, where he tried to get a subscription out of a man who was shoveling coal.