with such a heading as "Dismissal of
Officials." The reporter will have to bring some label that will fetch
the attention. "Massacre at the Custom House," or, "So Many Heads in the
Basket," will do. Now, I maintain that it requires a wonderful
imagination--something little short of genius, to be able, day after
day, to hit on a hundred of such headings. But the American journalist
does it.

[Illustration: SMITH CURED OF RATTLESNAKE BITE.]

An American paper is a collection of short stories. The Sunday edition
of the New York _World_, the New York _Herald_, the Boston _Herald_, the
Boston _Globe_, the Chicago _Tribune_, the Chicago _Herald_, and many
others, is something like ten volumes of miscellaneous literature, and I
do not know of any achievement to be compared to it.

I cannot do better than compare an American paper to a large store,
where the goods, the articles, are labeled so as to immediately strike
the customer.

A few days ago, I heard my friend, Colonel Charles H. Taylor, editor of
the Boston _Globe_, give an interesting summary of an address on
journalism which he is to deliver next Saturday before the members of
the New England Club of Boston. He maintained that the proprietor of a
newspaper has as much right to make his shop-window attractive to the
public as any tradesman. If the colonel is of opinion that journalism is
a trade, and the journalist a mere tradesman, I agree with him. If
journalism is not to rank among the highest and noblest of professions,
and is to be nothing more than a commercial enterprise, I agree with
him.

Now, if we study the evolution of journalism for the last forty or fifty
years, we shall see that daily journalism, especially in a democracy,
has become a commercial enterprise, and that journalism, as it was
understood forty years ago, has become to-day monthly journalism. The
dailies have now no other object than to give the news--the latest--just
as a tradesman that would succeed must give you the latest fashion in
any kind of business. The people of a democracy like America are
educated in politics. They think for themselves, and care but little for
the opinions of such and such a journalist on any question of public
interest. They want news, not literary essays on news. When I hear some
Americans say that they object to their daily journalism, I answer that
journalists are like other people who supply the public--they keep the
article that is wanted.

A free cou