of Bozrah; the
sheriff has painted his fence; Farmer Brown has lost his cow; the eminent
member from Neopolis has put an ell on one end of his mansion, and a
mortgage on the other.

On the face of it nothing is so vapid and profitless as column after
column of this reading. These "items" have very little interest, except
to those who already know the facts; but those concerned like to see them
in print, and take the newspaper on that account. This sort of inanity
takes the place of reading-matter that might be of benefit, and its
effect must be to belittle and contract the mind. But this is not the
most serious objection to the publication of these worthless details. It
cultivates self-consciousness in the community, and love of notoriety; it
develops vanity and self-importance, and elevates the trivial in life
above the essential.

And this brings me to speak of the mania in this age, and especially in
America, for notoriety in social life as well as in politics. The
newspapers are the vehicle of it, sometimes the occasion, but not the
cause. The newspaper may have fostered--it has not created--this hunger
for publicity. Almost everybody talks about the violation of decency and
the sanctity of private life by the newspaper in the publication of
personalities and the gossip of society; and the very people who make
these strictures are often those who regard the paper as without
enterprise and dull, if it does not report in detail their weddings,
their balls and parties, the distinguished persons present, the dress of
the ladies, the sumptuousness of the entertainment, if it does not
celebrate their church services and festivities, their social meetings,
their new house, their distinguished arrivals at this or that
watering-place. I believe every newspaper manager will bear me out in
saying that there is a constant pressure on him to print much more of
such private matter than his judgment and taste permit or approve, and
that the gossip which is brought to his notice, with the hope that he
will violate the sensitiveness of social life by printing it, is far away
larger in amount than all that he publishes.

To return for a moment to the subject of general news. The characteristic
of our modern civilization is sensitiveness, or, as the doctors say,
nervousness. Perhaps the philanthropist would term it sympathy. No doubt
an exciting cause of it is the adaptation of electricity to the
transmission of facts and ideas. T