THE YELLOW PRESS.

If all countries may boast the Press which they deserve, America's
desert is small indeed. No civilised country in the world has been
content with newspapers so grossly contemptible as those which are read
from New York to the Pacific Coast. The journals known as Yellow would
be a disgrace to dusky Timbuctoo, and it is difficult to understand
the state of mind which can tolerate them. Divorced completely from the
world of truth and intelligence, they present nothing which an educated
man would desire to read. They are said to be excluded from clubs and
from respectable houses. But even if this prohibition be a fact, their
proprietors need feel no regret. We are informed by the Yellowest of
Editors that his burning words are read every day by five million men
and women.

What, then, is the aspect and character of these Yellow Journals?
As they are happily strange on our side the ocean, they need some
description. They are ill-printed, over-illustrated sheets, whose end
and aim are to inflame a jaded or insensitive palate. They seem to
address the blind eye and the sluggish mind of the halfwitted. The
wholly unimportant information which they desire to impart is not
conveyed in type of the ordinary shape and size. The "scare" headlines
are set forth in letters three inches in height. It is as though the
editors of these sheets are determined to exhaust your attention. They
are not content to tell you that this or that inapposite event has taken
place. They pant, they shriek, they yell. Their method represents the
beating of a thousand big drums, the blare of unnumbered trumpets, the
shouted blasphemies of a million raucous throats. And if, with all this
noise dinning in your ear, you are persuaded to read a Yellow sheet,
which is commonly pink in colour, you are grievously disappointed. The
thing is not even sensational. Its "scare" headlines do but arouse a
curiosity which the "brightest and brainiest" reporter in the United
States is not able to satisfy.

Of what happens in the great world you will find not a trace in the
Yellow Journals. They betray no interest in politics, in literature,
or in the fine arts. There is nothing of grave importance which can be
converted into a "good story." That a great man should perform a great
task is immaterial. Noble deeds make no scandal, and are therefore not
worth reporting. But if you can discover that the great man has a hidden
vice, or an eccentric taste