f the brightest names known in the history of the
American press. They were true Bohemians,--once defined by George
William Curtis as the "literary men who had a divine contempt for
to-morrow." How cleverly those choice spirits wrote and talked about
their lives away back in the fifties. Get a file of the New York
_Figaro_, or some of the Easy Chair papers in _Harper's_ of that period,
and enjoy their cloud-land life! I only quote one sentence and it is
from "the Chair," though I half suspect Fitz James O'Brien, rather than
George William Curtis, penned it:--

"Bohemia is a roving kingdom--a realm in the air, like Arthur's
England. It sometimes happens that, as a gipsy's child turns out
to be a prince's child, who, perforce, dwells in a palace, so
the Bohemian is found in a fine house and high society. Bohemia
is a fairyland on this hard earth. It is Arcadia in New York."

Ah! yes, this is all very beautiful, but rent had to be paid; and the
literary workers of to-day never forget that journalism is the only
branch of literature that from the outset enables a man to live and pay
his way. And yet when we remember Henry Clapp, Fitz James O'Brien, N. G.
Shepherd, and Ned Wilkins, we feel that every working newspaper man is
better to-day because they struggled and starved; because they lived in
the free air of Bohemia.

With the worker in the art, "the struggle for existence" begins with his
first day's apprentice task as a reporter. No man ever became a
journalist who did not serve that apprenticeship. There is no hope for
him outside of complete success. It requires several years for him to
learn to get news and to properly write it. One failure will blight his
entire career. Unlike any other commercial commodity, news once lost
cannot be recouped.

Dr. Samuel Johnson was the first Parliamentary reporter. He got a list
of the speakers, then went to his lodgings in a dingy court off Fleet
Street and wrote out speeches for the Lords and the Commons. He did this
for years and not one of the men so honored is on record as having
denied the accuracy of the report(?). Dr. Johnson made the reputations
of half a dozen men who are to-day mentioned among the great English
orators. They were honorable men, as the world goes, but not one of
them, except Edmund Burke, ever acknowledged his indebtedness to Samuel
Johnson. I never have known a senator or congressman to thank a
Washington correspondent for making