of
Congress and stories of private life are alike all served up, fully
illustrated with pictures of the people and events. A corner is devoted
to children, another to women, another to religious Americans, and a
little sermon is preached. Then there are suggestive pictures for the
man about town, recipes for the cook, weather reports for the traveler,
a story for the romancer, perhaps a poem, and an editorial page, where
ideas and theories are promulgated and opinions manufactured on all
subjects, ready made for adoption by the reader, who in many instances
has his thinking done for him. I made a test of this, and asked a number
of men for their opinion on a certain subject, and then guessed the name
of their favorite paper, and in most instances was correct. They all
claimed that they took the paper because it agreed with their political
ideas; but I am confident that the reverse is true, the paper having
insidiously trained them to adopt its view. Here we see where the power
of one man or editor comes in, and worse yet, a nation which acquires
this "newspaper habit," this having some one to think for it by
machinery, as it were, will lose its mental power, its facility in
analysis. I made bold to suggest this to a prominent man, but he merely
laughed. As a whole, the American newspapers are valuable; they are the
real educators of the people, and have a vast influence. For this reason
there should be some restriction imposed on them.

CHAPTER VII

THE AMERICAN DOCTOR

At a dinner at Manchester in the summer I had as my _vis-a-vis_ a
delightful young American, who, among other things, said to me: "It is
astonishing to me that so many of your people live long, considering the
ignorance of your doctors." I assured her that this was merely her point
of view, and that we were well satisfied with our doctors or physicians.
I wished to retaliate by telling my fair companion a story I had heard
the day previous. An American physician operated upon a man and removed
what he called a "cyst," which he displayed with some pride to a doctor
of another school. "Why, man," said the latter, "that isn't a cyst;
it's the man's kidney!"

The Americans have made rapid advances in medicine and surgery, and they
have some extraordinary physicians. From two to four years of study
completes the education of some of the doctors, and hundreds are turned
out every year. Some are of the old and regular school of medicine, but
others