rom it. The well-told story has ever found admirers. To the world all
the stories have not been told. The stars show no age, and the sun was
as bright yesterday as it was the morning after creation. But a simple
story without character is not the highest form of fiction. It is a
story that may become a fad, if it be shocking enough, if it has in it
the thrill of delicious wickedness, but it cannot live. The literary
lion of to-day may be the literary ass of to-morrow, but the ass has his
bin full of oats and cannot complain.

One very striking literary tendency of to-day is the worship of the
English author in America and the hissing of the American author in
London. And this proves that American literature is scarcely more
popular in England than it is at home. But may not American publishers
after awhile take up a London hissing and use it as an advertisement.
Hissing is surely a recognition, and proves that an author has not been
wholly neglected.

The novel, whether it be of classic form or of faddish type, makes a
mark upon the mind of the public. Fiction is a necessary element of
modern education. A man may be a successful physician or a noted lawyer
without having read a novel; but he could not be regarded as a man of
refined culture. A novel is an intellectual luxury, and in the luxuries
of a country we find the refinements of the nation. It was not invention
but fancy that made Greece great. A novel-reading nation is a
progressive nation. At one time the most successful publication in this
country was a weekly paper filled with graceless sensationalism, and it
was not the pulpit nor the lecture-platform that took hold of the public
taste and lifted it above this trash--it was the publication in cheap
form of the English classics. And when the mind of the masses had been
thus improved, the magazine became a success.

One slow but unmistakable drift of fiction is toward the short story,
and the carefully edited newspaper may hold the fiction of the future.

WHITELAW REID

THE PRESS--RIGHT OR WRONG

[Speech of Whitelaw Reid at the 108th annual banquet of the Chamber
of Commerce of the State of New York, May 4, 1876. Samuel D.
Babcock, President of the Chamber, was in the chair, and proposed
the following toast, to which Mr. Reid was called upon for a
response: "The Press--right or wrong; when right, to be kept right;
when wrong, to be set right."]

MR. PRESIDENT:--La