"Kick Me Till I Holler"

1895

Horace Greeley's Request of a Proofreader, Who Was of Course Right.

Greeley, as is well known, was a crank on election figures and knew exactly how every county and town in the state was in the habit of going. A slight change in favor of his own party would fill him with satisfaction. One day he came into the office overjoyed that the Republicans had carried Westchester county in a local election. As usual, he wrote an editorial and put a comparative table, compiled from The Tribune almanac, in the middle of the article. When the paper came out next day, the figures were misplaced, The Republican vote appeared in the Democratic column, and vice versa, so that the comments did not at all fit the case stated. Mr. Greeley came clown in a towering rage, and in a whirlwind of profanity demanded of the subordinate in charge whether there was a proofreader on the paper and whether anybody in the office had a grain of sense.

"Why, yes. Mr. Greeley. You know old man So-and-so is the proofreader and has been for years. But what is the matter?"

"Matter? Blankety, blank, blank! Matter! Why, some blankety, blank blank has gone to work and changed the figures in that Westchester article so as to make the blankest nonsense out of it!"

"I don't think anybody would have ventured to change your figures, Mr. Greeley. Don't you think you had better look at the copy before pitching into the proofreader? You know he is very careful."

"I'll do nothing of the kind," said the old man as he shuffled upstairs. "I'll kick him out of the composing room. I won't be made a fool in this way."

Up stairs there was a scene very like that below, with the variation that Greeley told the proofreader that he ought to be kicked from one end of the composing room to the other. With the proverbial placidity of proofreaders and their provoking readiness for such emergencies, the man assailed quietly went to the hook, and taking therefrom Greeley's own copy held it under his eyes, with the single remark, "Read that, sir."

Greeley did read it. There was silence for a moment, and then his face assumed a look of mingled contempt and disgust. Then he turned around, with his back to the proofreader, lifted his coattails and said loud enough to be heard all over the room:

"Here, Sam, kick me and kick me till I holler!" — New York Mail and Express.