ieve that anything it can coax, wheedle, or
extort from the newspaper is fair salvage from the necessary
expenditures of life.

Recently I listened in amazement to the Rev. Robert Collyer boast at a
Cornell University dinner of having beguiled the newspapers of the
country. He told how he had schemed and got money to build a new church
after the Chicago fire. He did not make it very clear that the civilized
members of his race clamored for the new edifice, but he made painfully
apparent his ideas of chivalry to the press.

"In this matter," he began, "I have always been proud of the way in
which I 'worked the newspapers.' I succeeded in raising the money,
because I coaxed the editors into cooeperating with me. I wrote long
puffs about the congregation and its pastor, and got them printed. Then
I hurried 'round with the subscription list and a copy of the paper."

Of course, this was all said good-naturedly, was meant to be funny, and
was uttered from a public rostrum with an utter obliviousness to the
mental obliquity that a moment's thought will disclose. It left upon my
mind much the same impression as that once made by hearing an apparently
respectable man boast of having stolen an umbrella out of a hotel rack.

Later in the evening, when the reverend gentleman occupied a seat near
mine, I asked, with as much naivete as I could command, if he had
"worked" the plumbers, the architects, the masons, the carpenters, and
the bell-founders? To each of these questions he returned a regretful,
"No."

Despite his apparent innocence regarding the purport of my inquiry, I
doubt if this gentleman would have boasted that he secured his clothes
for nothing, that he wheedled his chops from his butcher, or coaxed his
groceries from the shopkeeper at the corner of his street.

And yet, he spoke with condescension of the editor and his means of
livelihood!

Theoretically, the editor is the public's mutton. Men who know him boast
of their influence with him, and over him. They dictate his policy for
him--or say they do, which, of course, is the same thing. Men who never
saw him claim to own him. Strangers, casually introduced, ask him
questions about his personal affairs that would be instantly resented in
any other walk of life.

An experience of my own will illustrate what I mean. At a country house,
near Philadelphia, I was introduced to a respectable-looking old man. In
the period following dinner, as we sat on the porch t