mbers,
the daily journal is destined, if it survives as a power, to become the
teacher--the very Bible--of the people. The people are already beginning
to distinguish between the wholesome and the meretricious in their
newspapers. Newspaper owners, likewise, are beginning to realize
the value of character. Instances might be cited where the public,
discerning some sinister but unseen power behind its press, has slowly
yet surely withdrawn its confidence and support. However impersonal it
pretends to be, with whatever of mystery it affects to envelop itself,
the public insists upon some visible presence. In some States the law
requires it. Thus "personal journalism" cannot be escaped, and whether
the "one-man power" emanates from the Counting Room or the Editorial
Room, as they are called, it must be clear and answerable, responsive to
the common weal, and, above all, trustworthy.

IV

John Weiss Forney was among the most conspicuous men of his time. He was
likewise one of the handsomest. By nature and training a journalist, he
played an active, not to say an equivocal, part in public life-at the
outset a Democratic and then a Republican leader.

Born in the little town of Lancaster, it was his mischance to have
attached himself early in life to the fortunes of Mr. Buchanan, whom he
long served with fidelity and effect. But when Mr. Buchanan came to the
Presidency, Forney, who aspired first to a place in the Cabinet, which
was denied him, and then to a seat in the Senate, for which he was
beaten--through flagrant bribery, as the story ran--was left out in the
cold. Thereafter he became something of a political adventurer.

The days of the newspaper "organ" approached their end. Forney's
occupation, like Othello's, was gone, for he was nothing if not an
organ grinder. Facile with pen and tongue, he seemed a born courtier--a
veritable Dalgetty, whose loyal devotion to his knight-at-arms deserved
better recognition than the cold and wary Pennsylvania chieftain
was willing to give. It is only fair to say that Forney's character
furnished reasonable excuse for this neglect and apparent ingratitude.
The row between them, however, was party splitting. As the friend and
backer of Douglas, and later along a brilliant journalistic soldier of
fortune, Forney did as much as any other man to lay the Democratic party
low.

I can speak of him with a certain familiarity and authority, for I was
one of his "boys." I admired h