"Why,
that isn't the way to do at all--in New York. It is easy to see you are
a stranger, and don't read the papers. The correct thing nowadays is for
the guest to criticise his entertainers. Mayor So-and-So always does it.
And only last year--it was at an Irish banquet, too--the speaker of the
evening, a Down-Easter like yourself, just spilled boiling vitriol over
the whole company, and rubbed it in."

I told him I didn't believe that story, and asked him to tell me the
gentleman's name. And he only answered me, evasively: "I didn't say he
was a gentleman."

I trust I know better than to say anything uncomplimentary about the
Press of New York, which compiles, or constructs, news for the whole
Continent, not only before our slower communities have heard of the
things chronicled, but often, with commendable enterprise, before they
have happened.

I admire the Press of New York. There are a great many Boston men on it,
and I have no mission to reform it. In New York, when you have a surplus
of journalistic talent, you export it to London, where it is out of
place--some of it. The feverish race for priority, which kills off so
many American journalists, sometimes, it would seem, almost before their
time (but that is a matter of opinion), is unknown in London. A man who
reads the "London Times," regularly and conscientiously, is guaranteed
forever against insomnia. London "Punch" is a paper which the severest
ascetic may read, all through Lent, without danger to his sobriety of
soul.

London gets even with you, too. You send her an Astor, and she
retaliates with a Stead. We ought to deal gently with Mr. Stead; for he
says that we are all children of the one "Anglo-Saxon" family--without
regard to race, color, or previous condition of servitude. He avers that
England looks upon America as a brother, and that may be so. It is not
easy, at this distance of time, to know just how Romulus looked upon
Remus, how Esau looked upon Jacob, how Cain looked upon Abel--but I have
no doubt that it was in about the same light that England looks upon
America--fraternally! But she ought not to afflict us with Mr. Stead. We
have enough to bear without him.

We know that the Press has its faults and its weaknesses. We can see
them every day, in our miserable contemporaries, and we do not shirk the
painful duty of pointing them out. We know that it has also virtues,
manifold, and we do not deny them, when an appreciative audience
compl