re courteously but firmly declined. He wrote
her letters which were at first acknowledged in the most formal
way, and finally ignored. No woman could have been more
circumspect and dignified. The young man preserved copies of his
own letters, introduced the two or three brief and formal notes
which he had received in reply, made a story of the incident,
stole the photograph of the woman, enclosed his own photograph,
mailed the whole matter to a New York newspaper, and committed
suicide. The result was a two or three column report of the
incident, with portraits of the unfortunate woman and the
suicide, and an elaborate and startling exaggeration of the few
inconspicuous, insignificant, and colorless facts from which the
narrative was elaborated. That a refined woman in American
society should be exposed to such a brutal invasion of her
privacy as that which was committed in this case reflects upon
every gentleman in the country.

No doubt, as the _Outlook_ goes on to show, the American people are
themselves largely responsible for this attitude of the press. They
have as a whole not only less reverence than Europeans for the privacy
of others, but also less resentment for the violation of their own
privacy. The new democracy has resigned itself to the custom of living
in glass houses and regards the desire to shroud one's personal life
in mystery as one of the survivals of the dark ages. The newspaper
personalities are largely "the result of the desperate desire of the
new classes, to whom democratic institutions have given their first
chance, to discover the way to _live_, in the wide social meaning of
the word."

One regrettable result of the way in which the American papers turn
liberty into license is that it actually deters many people from
taking their share in public life. The fact that any public action is
sure to bring down upon one's head a torrent of abuse or adulation,
together with a microscopic investigation of one's most intimate
affairs, is enough to give pause to all but the most resolute. Leading
journals go incredible lengths in the way they speak of public men.
One of the best New York dailies dismissed Mr. Bryan as "a wretched,
rattle-pated boy." Others constantly alluded to Mr. Cleveland as "His
Corpulency." For weeks the New York _Sun_ published a portrait of
President Hayes with the word FRAUD printed across the forehead