his speech presentable to educated
eyes. He has been known to grow warm in praise of all classes of
humanity, from Tipperary to Muscovy, but never a word of commendation
escapes his lips for a newspaper man. He believes in philanthropy, but
as Napoleon said to Talleyrand, he "wants it to be a long way off!" (_Je
veux seulement que ce soit de la philanthropie lointaine._)

With the rise of journalistic chivalry came the search for news. It
became a precious prize. The special correspondent and reporter sought
it. Truth was to be rescued from oblivion! Facts began to be hunted for
like the ambergris and ivory of commerce. At first the search resembled
the quest for the Oracle of the Holy Bottle,--a test as to the public's
opinion of news. What kind of service did the public want? Adventure
followed, as a matter of course, but love of adventure was not the
impelling motive.

The American newspaper, like the American railroad, developed along new
lines. Girardin, who had created all that is worth considering in the
French press, had pinned his faith to the _feuilleton_ and the snappy
editorial article, with its "one idea only." News was of no account. In
the English journal, the supremacy of the editorial page was asserted
and maintained. News was desirable but secondary; and there was no hurry
about obtaining it. In the Spanish press blossomed--and has ever since
bloomed--the paragraph. News was a good thing, if it could be told in a
few lines, but generally, alas, dangerous. A paragraph must only be long
enough to allow a cigarette to go out while you were reading it. Wax
matches cost only a cuarta per box, but cigarettes were expensive.
Beaumarchais understood the Spanish press when he put the famous epigram
into "Figaro's" lips: "So long as you print nothing, you may print
anything."

The chivalry of the editor toward his "esteemed contemporary" is a sad
and solemn phase of this true commentary.

After you have carefully reread the "editorial" pages of two
metropolitan journals from 1841 to date, and remember that the
contemporaries of Guttenberg called printing "the black art," you will
marvel that public opinion has ever changed. If the contemporaries of
the old Nuremberg printer had lived in 1882, and taken in the _Tribune_
of February 25th, they would have gone out to gather faggots to roast an
editor. The excuse for one of the most savage attacks ever made by one
American editor upon another was that a rival ha