d printed a private
telegram, sent by an editor to the chief magistrate of the nation, which
had found its way into wrong hands or had been "taken off the wires," as
many other messages had been before. And yet, young as I am, I remember
that in 1871, the treaty of Washington was "acquired" by means even more
questionable and printed entire, to the confusion and indignation of the
United States Senators. The very same editor laid down a dictum that was
thought to be very clever at the time: "It is the duty of our
correspondents to get the news; it is the business of other people to
keep their own secrets." This was all very well in 1871, but in 1882,
the moral "lay in the application on it."

From the very moment in which the American newspaper attained a definite
policy and impulse, its direction has been forward, and it has daily
grown in wealth and popular respect.

I have called the special correspondent the knight errant of the
newspaper. Let me prove it. The greatest, noblest of them all was J. A.
MacGahan, of Khiva and San Stefano. He was an American, born in Perry
County, Ohio. I can sketch his career in a few brief sentences: He was
at law-school in Brussels when the Franco-Prussian war burst upon
Europe, in 1870. Having had some experience as a writer for the press,
he entered the field at once. Danger and suffering were his, though he
did not achieve renown in that brief campaign. He then made his
memorable ride to Khiva, and wrote the best book on Central Asia known
to our language. Another turn of the wheel found him in Cuba describing
the Virginius complications. There I first met him. Thence he returned
to England, and sailed with Captain Young in the Pandora to the Arctic
regions, making the last search undertaken for the lost crew of Sir John
Franklin's expedition. MacGahan returned to London in the spring of 1876
in time to read in the newspapers brief despatches from Turkey
recounting the reported atrocities of the Bashi-Bazouks. He determined
at once to go to Bulgaria. In a month's time, he had put a new face on
the "Eastern Question." The great trouble between Christian and Turk was
no longer confined to "the petty quarrel of a few monks over a key and a
silver star," as defined by the late Mr. Kinglake, but assumed
proportions that could be discerned in every club and in every
drawing-room of Imperial London. MacGahan had begun his memorable ride,
the results of which will endure as long as Christ