prince or proletarian.

You enter through a narrow passage flanked with wire cages, in which are
confined for the day the clerks who take account of advertisements and
subscriptions. Melancholy objects seem these caged birds, whose hands
alone emerge at intervals through the pigeon-holes made for the purpose
of taking in money and advertisements. The universal beard and mustache
that ornament their chins, look, however, more unbusiness-like than are
the men really. They are shrewd and knowing birds that are inclosed in
these wire cages.

At publishing time, boys rushing in for papers, as in London offices,
are not here to be seen. The reason of this is simple: French newspaper
proprietors prefer doing their work themselves--they will have no middle
men. They serve all their customers by quarterly, yearly, or half-yearly
subscriptions. In every town in France there are subscription offices
for this journal, as well, indeed, as for all great organs of the press
generally. There are regular forms set up like registers at the
post-office, and all of these are gathered at the periodical renewal of
subscriptions to the central office. The period of renewal is every
fortnight.

Passing still further up the narrow and dim passage, one sees a
pigeon-hole, over which is written the word "Advertisements." This
superscription is now supererogatory, for there no advertisements are
received; that branch of the journal having been farmed out to a company
at 350,000 fr. a year. This is a system which evidently saves a vast
deal of trouble. The Advertising Company of Paris has secured almost a
monopoly of announcements and puffs. It has bought up the last page of
nearly every Paris journal which owns the patronage and confidence of
the advertising public of the French capital. At the end of the same
dark passages are the rooms specially used for the editors and writers.
In France, journals are bought for their polemics, and not for their
news: many of them have fallen considerably, however, from the high
estate which they held in public opinion previous to the last
revolution. There are men who wrote in them to advocate and enforce
principles, but in the chopping and changing times that France lives in,
it is not unusual to find the same men with different principles,
interest, or gain, being the object of each change. This result of
revolution might have been expected; and though it would be unfair to
involve the whole press in a s