Saturday Evening Post

“ On the Saturday evening—that period which ought to be the sweetest hour of the week to the working man—when the reward of his labour ought to be as freely given as it would ever be gratefully received—even this is pilfered from him. ”

“ Now a daily without illustration is rare. American humor finds expression in Puck, Judge, and Life; criticism in the Nation, in many other weeklies, and in the Saturday or Sunday editions of the dailies. The Times publishes a Saturday supplement composed wholly of book reviews and literary comment. Among religious journals, which often include literary criticism, are the Observer (Presbyterian) ”

“ But it is the old Evening Post still; a newspaper which, with a history one of the longest and richest in American journalism, has from generation to generation preserved the same sterling character. The objects of its conductors may be easily stated. They wish to keep it as public-spirited as the Evening Post of Hamilton and Coleman; as ardent in defense of democracy and the oppressed as the Evening Post of Leggett; as dignified, elevated, and fearless as the Evening Post of Bryant, Bigelow, and Godwin ”

“ All persons were requested to post their communications before six o'clock in the winter, and seven in the summer, on Saturday nights, "that the many poor men employed may have a little time to provide for their families against the Lord's Day." ”

“ I am letting the World speak for itself merely as an example of what many splendid newspapers have accomplished as leaders in public movements. The New York Evening Post is another example, it having long led popular demand for vocational guidance and control. ”

“ All that I can say on the subject is to declare with the utmost sincerity that not a single morning has arisen without my forming the resolution to write before the evening, and that not a single evening post-bell has rang without sounding the alarm to my conscience. In the mean time, days, hours and weeks have imperceptibly rolled away: a perpetual hurry and long days of Parliamentary business, the whole world coming to town at once, and a great deal of occupation at home relative to my History, which will come out some time after Christmas. ”

“ Sunday is a canker that must be cut ruthlessly out of the social organism. At present the whole community gets 'slack' on Saturday because of the paralysis that is about to fall on it. And then 'Black Monday'!—that day when the human brain tries to readjust itself—tries to realise that the shutters are down, and the streets are swept, and the stove-pipe hats are back in their band-boxes.... ”

“ Because the Evening Post circulated among the most intelligent people of the city, and because it had never forgotten that one object stated in its prospectus was “to cultivate a taste for sound literature,” it was chosen by Drake and Halleck as the medium for the most famous series of satirical poems, the “Biglow Papers” excepted, in American literature.
Year in and year out, the Evening Post kept a space at the head of its news columns open for the best verse it could obtain. ”

“ On a Saturday evening, from the hours of eight and nine, until eleven, every cadging house is in general particularly quiet, for the reasons we have already stated49; none ever going out to work on a Sunday (the sweepers of crossings, of course, excepted) , but those who are compelled from sheer necessity. ”

“ Each day used to be individually felt by me in its reference to the foreign post days; in its distance from, or propinquity to, the next Sunday. I had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday nights' sensations. ”

“ For the past quarter of a century the New York Evening Journal has attracted the largest readership of any evening newspaper in the United States on the sound principle of greatest service to the greatest number of men and women in every substantial walk of life. ”

“ It was late in autumn and on a Saturday evening, at which time those persons in humble life, who cannot shave themselves, and whose sense of religion leads them to think that what may be done on the Saturday night ought not to be put off till the Sunday morning, settle their weekly account with their beards. ”

“ Before we object to public-houses, and above all to their Saturday evening recreations, we must alter the systems that make them a necessary comfort to the poor and laborious. Till then, in spite of the vulgar part of the polite, we shall have an esteem for the Devil and the Bag o’ Nails; and like to hear, as we go along on Saturday night, the applauding knocks on the table that follow the song of ‘Lovely Nan,’ or ‘Brave Captain Death,’ or ‘Tobacco is an Indian Weed,’ or ‘Why, Soldiers, why,’ or ‘Says Plato why should man be vain,’ or that judicious and unanswerable ditty, commencing ”

“ Saturday will always be my Sabbath, no matter what convention would make me do. We have decided that writing or sewing or pleasuring, since it hurts no one, is no more a sin on that day than on another; to sit with idle hands and gossip or slander is more so. ”

“ Nothing is more gratifying on arising in the morning and sitting down to partake of a daintily served breakfast than to glance hurriedly over the front page of one's favorite newspaper and see it covered with startling headlines. It matters little what has happened during the night to shock the community, so long as it satisfies one's appetite for sensational news. ”

“ There is a run of business on Saturday night, and the assistants behind the counter, although they, too, love Sunday with the repose it brings, almost dread it as being preceded by such a rush of work. And these people who come to redeem are not so easy to manage as the poor wretches who pledge, the latter being mild and patient, full of anguish though they are ”

“ It is fonder and Saturday evening is mingling borrowing some one, not borrowing some one, that is to say there is an offering.
All like a thing, all like winking, all like thinking, all like sinking, all like that, all like a thing, all like massaging, all like thinking, all like that, all like a vision, all like that, all like distinguishing, all like that, all like that thing, all like that, all like thinking.
No old jerks, no old news, all is wet and there is no time in a day. Every day is not away. ”

“ To your answer of Sunday afternoon he will reply: "The working man should have his Sunday out of doors. He does not want to be hived up in a building in the daytime." If you yield to his entreaty and take pity on the working man, you will probably find that your expensive evening opening, when you pay your men double for overtime and have your lighting to arrange for, has been brought about for a group of fifteen to twenty of your regular constituents! ”

“ The sixpenny journals, the Evening Post, Commercial Advertiser, Courier, Journal of Commerce, and Express, perforce learned much from the Herald about news-gathering. Years later the Evening Post described the new spirit of enterprise which had seized upon journalism by the early forties:
In those days expresses were run on election nights, and in times of great excitement the Herald and Tribune raced locomotive engines against each other in order to get the earliest news ”

“ Improvements have been constant. The aim has been to give the public a better and still better newspaper, to make the New York Evening Journal more attractive and interesting to every member of the family. ”

“ These industrious women, panting with the enthusiasm of work, enjoy Saturday more than any other day of the week. The enjoyment springs from various causes. There is first the delight that comes from a vigorous exercise of the muscles. This pleasure is heightened by the knowledge that the work is for a good end, and that on Sunday the house will be resplendent, immaculate, and peaceful. ”

“ Profusion is a characteristic of the American newspaper. There is too much of everything. And when Sunday comes with its masses of reading matter proper to the Day of Rest one is appalled. One thing is certain—no American can find time to do justice both to his Sunday paper and his Maker. It is principally on Sunday that one realises that if Matthew Arnold's saying that every nation has the newspapers it deserves is true, America must have been very naughty. ”

“ You see, Saturday night is a leisure night in counting-houses and such-like places, while it’s the busiest of all for servants. Well! it was a Saturday night, and I’d my baize apron on, and the tails of my bed-gown pinned together behind, down on my knees, pipeclaying the kitchen, when a knock comes to the back door. ”

“ Of serious consideration, also, is the fact that morning newspaper work sadly interferes with social and home life and with a host of amusements and entertainments and pleasures enjoyed by day workers. In the big cities members of news staffs seldom dine at home. The news writers go on duty early in the afternoon if not before; the news editorial staff at six o’clock or thereabouts, all to remain until well after midnight. Dinner parties, theater parties, dancing parties—all evening social life may be enjoyed on the one day only of the seven, known as the day off. ”

“ Who can ever forget the joy that comes with the bright Saturday afternoon in the country? The whole school is freed from the thraldom of the bench and task, and each has to choose, among many delights, how to employ the golden hours. ”

“ The unemployed's one o'clock on Saturday! Nothing more can be done this week, so you drag yourself wearily and despairingly 'home,' with the cheerful prospect of a penniless Saturday afternoon and evening and the long horrible Australian-city Sunday to drag through. One of the landlady's clutch―and she is an old hen―opens the door, exclaims 'Oh, Mr. ”

“ THE ABSENT-MINDED MAN
You ask him to dine with you on Thursday to meet a few people who are anxious to know him.
“Now don’t make a muddle of it,” you say, recollectful of former mishaps, “and come on the Wednesday.”
He laughs good-naturedly as he hunts through the room for his diary.
“Shan’t be able to come Wednesday,” he says, “shall be at the Mansion House, sketching dresses, and on Friday I start for Scotland, so as to be at the opening of the Exhibition on Saturday. It’s bound to be all right this time. Where the deuce is that diary! ”

“ Saturday is the name, not so much of a day, as of a specific phase of human experience. And it is a great phase. We all catch ourselves at odd moments living over again some of the unforgettable Saturdays of long ago. In actual fact, a man may be lounging in an armchair beside his winter fire or sprawling on the lawn on a drowsy summer afternoon. ”

“ One form of "Saturdaying" for women is going to the hospitals, talking with the wounded and writing letters for them, mending their clothes, washing sheets, etc. The majority of "Saturdayings" at present are concerned with transport work and with getting and shifting wood, because at the moment these are the chief difficulties. I have talked to many "Saturdayers," Communist and non-Communist, and all alike spoke of these Saturday afternoons of as kind of picnic. ”

“ As he wends his way homeward, he meets a citizen who has for once for some reason arisen at what seems to him an unholy hour of the morning.
“Good morning,” says the citizen, “what in the world are you doing up so early?”
“Oh,” says the night editor, “we newspaper men have to rise real early in order to get the paper out by breakfast time.”
“To be sure, to be sure,” says the citizen. “I never thought of that!”
(Houston Daily Post, Sunday morning, March 29, 1896.) ”

“ Nearly every poor man’s market does its Sunday trade. For a few hours on the Sabbath morning, the noise, bustle, and scramble of the Saturday night are repeated, and but for this opportunity many a poor family would pass a dinnerless Sunday. ”

“ So Saturday came, and both were rather the worse for so much idleness, since daily duties and studies are the wholesome bread which feeds the mind better than the dyspeptic plum-cake of sensational reading, or the unsubstantial bon-bons of frivolous amusement. ”

“ The afternoon is far advanced—the parks and public drives are crowded. Carriages, gigs, phaetons, stanhopes, and vehicles of every description, glide smoothly on. The promenades are filled with loungers on foot, and the road is thronged with loungers on horseback. Persons of every class are crowded together, here, in one dense mass. The plebeian, who takes his pleasure on no day but Sunday, jostles the patrician, who takes his, from year’s end to year’s end. You look in vain for any outward signs of profligacy or debauchery. ”

“ Our house never advertises in the Sunday papers, with the extraordinary result that we prospered in direct consequence. Many warned us that we were holding to a suicidal policy, for in America Sunday papers are the chief means of publicity. ”

“ The Sunday newspaper, I think, is the best of any day in the week. That paper keeps hundreds and thousands at home. You can find in it information about almost everything in the world. One of the great Sunday papers will keep a family busy reading almost all day. Now, I do not wonder that the ministers are so opposed to the Sunday newspaper, and so they are opposed to anything calculated to decrease the attendance at church. Why, they want all the parks, all the museums, all the libraries closed on Sunday, and they want the World's Fair closed on Sunday. ”

“ In accordance with this conception of my functions, I always held the news idea in mind. I was alert to secure advance sheets of important books, in order that the Evening Post might be the first of newspapers to tell readers about them.
Usually the publishers were ready and eager to give the Evening Post these opportunities, though the literary editors of some morning newspapers bitterly complained of what they regarded as favoritism when I was able to anticipate them. On one very notable occasion, however, great pains were taken by the publishers to avoid all [218] grounds of complaint. ”

“ Talent, the most expert and brilliant that money can attract, as exemplified throughout the pages of this booklet, gives you the secret of reader interest and reader confidence in the New York Evening Journal—an overwhelming public preference over one hundred per cent greater than the next largest standard size evening newspaper in New York City. ”