on scenes and details which his
very soul revolted from mentioning,--it is not hard to fancy such a soul
visited at last by a species of delirium-tremens, in which the speeches of
men who had spoken, the gowns of women who had danced, the faces, the
figures, the furniture of celebrities, should all be mixed up in a
grotesque phantasmagoria of torture, before which he should writhe as
helplessly and agonizingly as the poor whiskey-drinker before his snakes.
But it would be a cruel misplacement of punishment. All the while the true
guilty would be placidly sitting down at still further unsavory banquets,
which equally helpless providers were driven to furnish!

The evil is all the harder to deal with, also, because it is like so many
evils,--all, perhaps,--only a diseased outgrowth, from a legitimate and
justifiable thing. It is our duty to sympathize; it is our privilege and
pleasure to admire. No man lives to himself alone; no man can; no man
ought. It is right that we should know about our neighbors all which will
help us to help them, to be just to them, to avoid them, if need be; in
short, all which we need to know for their or our reasonable and fair
advantage. It is right, also, that we should know about men who are or
have been great all which can enable us to understand their greatness; to
profit, to imitate, to revere; all that will help us to remember whatever
is worth remembering. There is education in this; it is experience, it is
history.

But how much of what is written, printed, and read to-day about the men
and women of to-day comes under these heads? It is unnecessary to do more
than ask the question. It is still more unnecessary to do more than ask
how many of the men and women of to-day, whose names have become almost as
stereotyped a part of public journals as the very titles of the journals
themselves, have any claim to such prominence. But all these
considerations seem insignificant by side of the intrinsic one of the
vulgarity of the thing, and its impudent ignoring of the most sacred
rights of individuals. That there are here and there weak fools who like
to see their names and most trivial movements chronicled in newspapers
cannot be denied. But they are few. And their silly pleasure is very small
in the aggregate compared with the annoyance and pain suffered by
sensitive and refined people from these merciless invasions of their
privacy. No precautions can forestall them, no reticence prevent; n