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170 THE PHONOGRAM THE PROOFREADER The proofreader has long shared with the “intelli- gent compositor** the reputation for the total depravity which has made a writer say “See the pale martyr with shirt on fire,** when he wrote “in sheet of fire;’’ and to ask “ Is there no bam in Gilford; ” when he meant “Is there no balm in Gilead ? *’—to speak of his love for “alum water” when he wrote “ Alma Mater,” and to speak of “a mysterious dispensation of Providence” as a “ mysterious disappearance of provisions.*’ The silence of the proofreader has been taken either as evidence of his guilt, or that he was proof against reproofs. The proofreader is probably the most unanimously im- precated man in the world. It is impossible for him to satisfy anybody, and therefore the sheerest folly for him to expect to please everybody. Through weary hours he must apply himself intensely to matter which does not interest him; he must follow, not mechanically, but with his mind, disquisitions which are quite likely to be highly odious to him. He must correct the numerous blunders of writers, and rectify the manifold embellishments of the intelligent compositor. His information must be large and varied; he must possess an acquaintance with foreign terms in use in the language which he corrects, and must be able to rectify errors in orthography, grammar, geography and history. His task is the most thankless one on earth, for no writer ever admits the possibility of an error on his part preferring to make the proofreader a scapegoat for every fault .—Printing Press.