ng the possible
appeals open to them they deliberately choose the lowest. For people are
capable of Good as well as of Bad; and if they cannot get the Bad they
will sometimes take the Good. Newspapers, probably, could exist, even
under democratic conditions, by maintaining a certain standard of
intelligence and morals. But it is easier to exist on melodrama,
fatuity and sport. And one or two papers adopting that course force the
others into line; for here, as in so many departments of modern life,
"The Bad drives out the Good." This process of deterioration of the
press is proceeding rapidly in England, with the advent of the halfpenny
newspaper. It has not gone so far as in America; but there is no reason
why it should not, and every reason why it should; for the same causes
are at work.

I have called the process "deterioration," but that, of course, is
matter of opinion. A Cabinet Minister, at a recent Conference in London,
is reported to have congratulated the press on its progressive
improvement during recent years. And Lord Northcliffe is a peer. The
more the English press approximates to the American, the more, it would
seem, it may hope for public esteem and honour. And that is natural, for
the American method pays.

Well, the sun still shines and the sky is still blue. But between it and
the American people stretches a veil of printed paper. Curious! the
fathers of this nation read nothing but the Bible. That too, it may be
said, was a veil; but a veil woven of apocalyptic visions, of lightning
and storm, of Leviathan, and the wrath of Jehovah. What is the stuff of
the modern veil, we have seen. And surely the contrast is calculated to
evoke curious reflections.

V

IN THE ROCKIES

Walking alone in the mountains to-day I came suddenly upon the railway.
There was a little shanty of a station 8000 feet above the sea; and,
beyond, the great expanse of the plains. It was beginning to sleet, and
I determined to take shelter. The click of a telegraph operator told me
there was some one inside the shed. I knocked and knocked again, in
vain; and it was a quarter of an hour before the door was opened by a
thin, yellow-faced youth chewing gum, who looked at me without a sign of
recognition or a word of greeting. I have learnt by this time that
absence of manners in an American is intended to signify not surliness
but independence, so I asked to be allowed to enter. He admitted me, and
resumed his operation