iments us upon them. A conscientious journalist never shrinks from
the truth, even when it does violence to his modesty. In fact, he tells
the truth under all circumstances, or nearly all. If driven to the
painful alternative of choosing between that which is new and that which
is true, he wisely decides that "truth" is mighty, and will prevail,
whereas news won't keep. Nevertheless, it is a safe rule not to believe
everything that you see in the papers. Advertisers are human, and liable
to err.

Lamartine predicted, long ago, that before the end of the present
century the Press would be the whole literature of the world. His
prediction is almost verified already. The multiplication and the
magnitude of newspapers present, not a literary, but an economic
problem. The Sunday paper alone has grown, within a decade, from a
modest quarto to a volume of 48, 60, 96, 120 pages, with the stream
steadily rising and threatening the levees on both banks. At a similar
rate of expansion in the next ten years, it will be made up of not less
than 1,000 pages, and the man who undertakes to read it will be liable
to miss First Mass.

The thoughtful provision of giving away a "farm coupon" with every
number may avert trouble for a time, but it will be only for a time. The
reader will need a farm, on which to spread out and peruse his purchase;
but the world is small, and land has not the self-inflating quality of
paper.

But to speak more seriously: Is modern journalism, then, nothing but a
reflection of the frivolity of the day, of the passing love of
notoriety? I say no! I believe that the day of sensational journalism,
of the blanket sheet and the fearful woodcut, is already passing away.
Quantity cannot forever overcome quality, in that or any other field.
When we think of the men who have done honor to the newspaper
profession, we do not think so proudly of this or that one who "scooped"
his contemporaries with the first, or "exclusive," report of a murder or
a hanging, but of men like the late George W. Childs, whom all true
journalists honor and lament.

We think of the heroes of the pen, who carried their lives in their
hands as they went into strange, savage countries, pioneers of
civilization. It would be invidious to mention names, where the roll is
so long and glorious; but I think, at the moment, of O'Donovan, Forbes,
Stanley, Burnaby, Collins, and our own Irish-American, MacGahan, the
great-hearted correspondent, who c