to the rarity of the species and to the greatness of the
services of which he is the medium. By reporters, we mean, of course,
the entire corps of news-givers, from the youth who relates the
burning of a stable, to the philosopher who chronicles the last vagary
of a German metaphysician. These laborious men will be appreciated in
due time. By them all the great hits of journalism have been made, and
the whole future of journalism is theirs.

So difficult is the reporter's art, that we can call to mind only two
series of triumphant efforts in this department,--Mr. Russell's
letters from the Crimea to the London Times, and N.P. Willis's
"Pencillings by the Way," addressed to the New York Mirror. Each of
these masters chanced to have a subject perfectly adapted to his taste
and talents, and each of them made the most of his opportunity.
Charles Dickens has produced a few exquisite reports. Many ignorant
and dull men employed on the New York Herald have written good reports
_because_ they were dull and ignorant. In fact, there are two kinds of
good reporters,--those who know too little, and those who know too
much, to wander from the point and evolve a report from the depths of
their own consciousness. The worst possible reporter is one who has a
little talent, and depends upon that to make up for the meagreness of
his information. The best reporter is he whose sole object is to
relate his event exactly as it occurred, and describe his scene just
as it appeared; and this kind of excellence is attainable by an honest
plodder, and by a man of great and well-controlled talent. If we were
forming a corps of twenty-five reporters, we should desire to have
five of them men of great and highly trained ability, and the rest
indefatigable, unimaginative, exact short-hand chroniclers, caring for
nothing but to get their fact and relate it in the plainest English.

There is one custom, a relic of the past, still in vogue in the
offices of daily papers, which is of an absurdity truly exquisite. It
is the practice of paying by the column, or, in other words, paying a
premium for verbosity, and imposing a fine upon conciseness. It will
often happen that information which cost three days to procure can be
well related in a paragraph, and which, if related in a paragraph,
would be of very great value to the newspaper printing it. But if the
reporter should compress his facts into that space, he would receive
for his three days' labor abo