n--American through and through to the bone. I am
not unmindful of Cooper and Hawthorne, of Longfellow, of Lowell and of
Poe, but speak of Irving as the pioneer American man of letters, and of
Mark Twain and Bret Harte as American literature's most conspicuous and
original modern examples.

Chapter the Twenty-Seventh

The Profession of Journalism--Newspapers and Editors in
America--Bennett, Greeley and Raymond--Forney and Dana--The Education
of a Journalist

I

The American newspaper has had, even in my time, three separate and
distinct epochs; the thick-and-thin, more or less servile party
organ; the personal, one-man-controlled, rather blatant and would-be
independent; and the timorous, corporation, or family-owned billboard of
such news as the ever-increasing censorship of a constantly centralizing
Federal Government will allow.

This latter appears to be its present state. Neither its individuality
nor its self-exploitation, scarcely its grandiose pretension, remains.
There continues to be printed in large type an amount of shallow stuff
that would not be missed if it were omitted altogether. But, except as a
bulletin of yesterday's doings, limited, the daily newspaper counts
for little, the single advantage of the editor--in case there is
an editor--that is, one clothed with supervising authority who
"edits"--being that he reaches the public with his lucubrations first,
the sanctity that once hedged the editorial "we" long since departed.

The editor dies, even as the actor, and leaves no copy. Editorial
reputations have been as ephemeral as the publications which gave them
contemporary importance. Without going as far back as the Freneaus and
the Callenders, who recalls the names of Mordecai Mannasseh Noah, of
Edwin Crosswell and of James Watson Webb? In their day and generation
they were influential and distinguished journalists. There are dozens
of other names once famous but now forgotten; George Wilkins Kendall;
Gerard Hallock; Erastus Brooks; Alexander Bullitt; Barnwell Rhett;
Morton McMichael; George William Childs, even Thomas Ritchie, Duff Green
and Amos Kendall. "Gales and Seaton" sounds like a trade-mark; but it
stood for not a little and lasted a long time in the National Capital,
where newspaper vassalage and the public printing went hand-in-hand.

For a time the duello flourished. There were frequent "affairs of
honor"--notably about Richmond in Virginia and Charleston