Chasing A Fugitive Subscriber
by
Printers, from time immemorial–back possibly to the days of Faust–have suffered martyrdom, more or less, at the hands of the people who didn’t pay! Many of the long-established newspaper concerns can show a “black list” as long as the militia law, and an unpaid cash account bulky enough to take Cuba! Country publishers suffer in this way intensely. About one half of the “subscribers” to the Clarion of Freedom, or the Universal Democrat, or the Whig Shot Tower, seem to labor under the Utopian notion that printers were made to mourn over unpaid subscription lists; or that they “got up” papers for their own peculiar amusement, and carried them or sent them to the doors of the public for mere pastime! Every publisher, of about every paper we ever examined, about this time of year, has told his own story–requested his subscribers to come forward–pay over–help to keep the mill going–creditors easy–fire in the stove–meal in the barrel–children in bread, butter and shoes–Sheriff at bay, and other tragical affairs connected with the operations attendant upon unsettled cash accounts! But, how many heed such “notices?” Paying subscribers do not read them–such applications do not apply to them– they regret to see them in the paper, and, like honest, common-sensed people, don’t probe or meddle with other people’s shortcomings. The delinquent subscriber don’t read such calls upon his humanity–they are distasteful to him; he may squint and grin over the notice to pay up, and chuckles to himself–“Ah, umph! dun away, old feller; I ain’t one o’ that kind that sends money by mail; it might be lost, and the man that duns me for two or three dollars’ worth of newspapers, may get it if he knows how.”
Well, the good time has come. Printers now may wait no longer; the jig’s up–they have found out a way to get their money just as easy as other laborers in the fields of science, art, mechanism, law, physic and religion, get theirs. Let the printer cry Eureka.
Doctor Pendleton St. Clair Smith, a patron of the fine arts, best tailors, barbers, boot blacks, and the newspaper press, was a tooth operator of some skill and great pretension. He lived and moved in modern style, and though no man could be more desirous of indulging in “short credit,” no man believed or acted more readily upon the principle–
—-“base is the slave that
pays
.”
Dr. P. St. C. Smith “slipped up” one day, leaving the well done community of Boston and the environs, for fields more congenial to his peculiar talents. He stuck the printer, of course. His numerous subscription accounts to the various local news and literary journals, in the aggregate amounted to quite considerable; and the printers didn’t begin to like it! Now, it takes a Yankee to head off a Yankee, and about this time a live, double-grand-action Yankee, named Peabody, possibly, happened in at one of the offices, where two brother publishers were “making a few remarks” over delinquent subscribers, and especially were they wrought up against and giving jessy to Dr. Pendleton St. Clair Smith!
“How much does the feller owe you?” quoth Peabody.
“Owe? More than he’ll ever pay during the present generation.”
“Perhaps not,” says Peabody; “now if you’ll just give me the full particulars of the man, his manners and customs, name and size, and sell me your accounts, at a low notch, I’ll buy ’em; I’ll collect ’em, too, if the feller’s alive, out of jail, and any where around between sunrise and sunset!”