of printer's ink. Bowles was born and reared
in the office of the Springfield Republican, founded by his father, and
Halstead, a cross betwixt a pack horse and a race horse, was broken to
harness before he was out of his teens.

Assuming journalism, equally with medicine and law, to be a profession,
it is the only profession in which versatility is not a disadvantage.
Specialism at the bar, or by the bedside, leads to perfection and
attains results. The great doctor is the great surgeon or the great
prescriptionist--he cannot be great in both--and the great lawyer is
rarely great, if ever, as counselor and orator.

[Illustration: Henry Watterson--From a painting by Louis Mark in the
Manhattan Club, New York]

The great editor is by no means the great writer. But he ought to be
able to write and must be a judge of writing. The newspaper office is a
little kingdom. The great editor needs to know and does know every range
of it between the editorial room, the composing room and the pressroom.
He must hold well in hand everybody and every function, having risen,
as it were, step-by-step from the ground floor to the roof. He should be
level-headed, yet impressionable; sympathetic, yet self-possessed;
able quickly to sift, detect and discriminate; of various knowledge,
experience and interest; the cackle of the adjacent barnyard the noise
of the world to his eager mind and pliant ear. Nothing too small for him
to tackle, nothing too great, he should keep to the middle of the road
and well in rear of the moving columns; loving his art--for such
it is--for art's sake; getting his sufficiency, along with its
independence, in the public approval and patronage, seeking never
anything further for himself. Disinterestedness being the soul of
successful journalism, unselfish devotion to every noble purpose in
public and private life, he should say to preferment, as to bribers,
"get behind me, Satan." Whitelaw Reid, to take a ready and conspicuous
example, was a great journalist, but rather early in life he abandoned
journalism for office and became a figure in politics and diplomacy so
that, as in the case of Franklin, whose example and footsteps in the
main he followed, he will be remembered rather as the Ambassador than as
the Editor.

More and more must these requirements be fulfilled by the aspiring
journalist. As the world passes from the Rule of Force--force of
prowess, force of habit, force of convention--to the Rule of Nu