And there were those who thought he put too much time into lectures. But in spite of his few faults, the body of his people loved him well. It lay in their plan to advance his salary, though he assured me they paid him all he earned. They also were about to provide him a lieutenant, let him preach at his leisure, and pension him when too old to preach at all. Having tarried in the West, possibly it was a mistake that he let go Chicago's Unity to take hold of New York's Messiah, in the fall of '79. Still, he is one of the largest digits, not the ciphers, on the Knickerbocker slate. By way of ending biography where the subject began,―at the small end,—the boy Robert merits a type or two, though the record is familiar. His grandfather, if you care to turn back so far, fell beside Nelson at Trafalgar; and, thereupon, his father became heir to the London poor-house. But soon a Yorkshire worker in iron picked him out for a bright un" and led him thither, where he worked hard, married a gracious orphan girl, and reared Robert-service enough to the world. All of Robert's days in a school-house lay between his fifth and ninth years. After that he was a good student at the forge, lunching on books while he blew the bellows or switched the flies from a customer's horse. At fourteen he left Keighley (his birthplace) to become apprentice at Ilkley. There he grew, labored, and borrowed books in sight of the Brontes' Haworth home and the house where Heber had composed many hymns. There, too, at twenty-four he took his first text. And two years later he took a wife and emigrated to America. On this side the sea, as a man among Americans, I trust you now know him fairly well. Let us leave Robert Collyer with an incident in proof that his self-culture to the chorus of his Yorkshire anvil was wise, and placed him far above the average common people of his county. Directly he reached this country, he addressed us well in our own words. Yet, about that date, a Yorkshire farmer was summoned into court at Liverpool, only thirteen miles away. His rude patois could not be understood, and an interpreter had to be called. EIGHTH MOVEMENT.-PREMONITIONS. LORA. BY PAUL PASTNOR. So the days passed for a week, and the maiden was busy,— HIGH on the sand-bar were breaking the cold autumn bil- Even more skilled than of old in her humble home duties. lows, Gloomy and sad was the sky, and the wild gulls were screaming; Yet was the cottage of farmer Laroix never brighter: Lora at last had returned, and her presence was sunshine. "Child," cried the meek, wond'ring mother, "how queenly art getting! Six changeful weeks at the tavern have made thee a woman." Also her father, when home he returned in the evening, Bowed to the beautiful lady-then knew her, and kissed her. Still she gave time to the children; she decked them with trifles, Taught winning ways to her sisters, and gallantry's graces Unto her brothers; she told them love-stories by twilight. Ofttimes Gillaume, the prince of her brothers, the eldest, Nearly as tall as his sister, and looking toward manhood, She would beguile to the orchard, and there fill his bosom With the fond secrets of maidens, the little love-fancies, Which he would certainly win! said his proud, smiling sister. Then up and down, through the ranks of the ugly gray treetrunks, "Who brought thee back?" he inquired, in his practical Twisted and old and uncouth,-out of tune with loveman's way. prattle,"Or didst thou drift with the wind, like a leaf from the oak- They two would walk, arm-in-arm, not as brother and sister, top?" But with the ardent conceit of another companion! "Nay," answered Lora, her hazel eyes dropping before Bareheaded thus, with the sunlight ensnared in her tresses, him, Lora was strolling, one late afternoon, with her brother, "One of the guests brought me down-in poor Oliver's Pensively quiet, and pressing more close to his shoulder carriage." Than was her wont, when the gliding of wheels filled the orchard. Then fell a gloom and a silence, as Lora intended. "Oh, it is Luke!" cried the maiden; and straightway her Felt the wild leap of her heart, on his shoulder escaping, Fair as a baby's first dream from the cavern of Pluto! "Am I enchanted, like one who woke up in a palace, Leaned o'er and kissed her-because all the stars swept to kissing! Meanwhile, the wondering boy, in pursuit of his sister, THE DAILY PAPERS. BY ELEANOR MOORE HIESTAND. In spite of our blatant boasting, is it not an | balanced, desires also to know the precise value unfortunate fact that American journalism has of every weight in either scale. To gratify this fallen upon evil days? A superficial observer, curiosity, a leaf of political instruction is served misled by the number and size of our papers, up every morning with tea; when our politician their comprehensive and exhaustive contents, and has feasted upon this, he repairs to a coffee-house, by what we call their enterprise, might, perhaps, in order to ruminate upon what he has read, and feel called upon to resent such an imputation; increase his collection; from thence he proceeds but would he be justified in so doing? This to the ordinary, inquires what news, and treasquery, of course, does not apply to those holiday uring up every acquisition there, hunts about all publications which appear only once a week, or the evening in quest of more, and carefully adds once a month, and which are enriched with the it to the rest. Thus at night he returns home, mature thought, adorned with the fine rhetoric, of full of the important advices of the day: when men of letters, who, as compared with the hum-lo! awaking next morning he finds the instructions drum, overworked editor of a daily, the common- of yesterday a collection of absurdity and palpaplace journalist, are gentlemen of elegant leisure. ble falsehood." Our complaints and our praises are alike reserved for those courier sheets which are served up every morning with breakfast, and which we digest with our coffee and rolls. News getting in this country amounts to a mania. I have often thought how aptly a certain observation of Dr. Goldsmith's concerning the English people of the last century might be applied to us. In the character of a Citizen of the World, he wrote to that august but mythical personage, Fum Hoam, as follows: "An Englishman not satisfied with finding, by his own prosperity, the contending powers of Europe properly Without lingering over the sharp but delicate satire couched in the amusing epitome of the daily news which follows close upon this quotation in one of the famous Chinese Letters, we cannot help wondering, if such were the naïve comments of the distinguished Lien Chi Atlaugi upon English quidnuncs, what would he say to the temper and conduct of American newsmongers? skimming the four corners of the earth to satisfy this abnormal craving. We are not, however, ourselves entirely responsible for this gluttonous curiosity. The papers first aroused in us this greed for news. They tickled our intellectual palates with telegraphic tidbits till they engendered an appetite, and we, thinking no harm could come from such an innocent indulgence, abandoned the curb. Our literary taste, hitherto delicate and discriminating, thrived upon this fare better than it was expected to. It grew in strength and voracity, in arrogance and impudence, till the foolhardy journalist found himself at the mercy of the monster he had been harboring. To-day he is groaning under the pressure of a heavy contract He is bound to furnish news in quantity and quality acceptable to this omnivorous appetite, or else submit to be broken on the wheel of public opinion. The only circumstance in his favor is that we have a stomach like an ostrich. It seems, too, that there can be no limit placed upon this growing demand for news. The popular opinion is that it is incompatible with progress for us to rest content with the same quota of news that satisfied us ten years ago. As we reach a higher pitch of civilization, we expect our journals to change their form and substance to suit our altered condition. This would be rather commendable than otherwise, if the demand were only for better selected matter, for items of graver import and less sensational character. But the cry is an indiscriminate one for more news, and the cable, the telegraph, the telephone, and the post are pressed into harder service. In order to meet the multifarious requirements of popular taste, our newspapers have felt it incumbent upon them to present contents of an unbounded variety and of a most exhaustive character. They have to do it, or they will lose patronage and support. If they didn't, their reputation would be forever blasted by the damning accusation that they were wanting in enterprise, the sine qua non of journalistic success. But is there not something surfeiting in so much news? Is it not a diet apt to cloy on one's palate occasionally? Do we not often experience a sort of embarras de richesse? For myself, I confess I often have a feeling of repugnance for the typographic monster who enthrones himself at the breakfast-table. Moist from the press, and reeking with printer's ink, it falls like a wet blanket on my curiosity; its very volume takes the edge off my appetite for its contents. I am like an invalid who relishes some not over-abundant dainty, delicately served, but whose caprice revolts from a vulgar superabundance, however excellent the viands. My piquant solicitude for the world's welfare receives a rebuff. In traveling up one column and down another, holding up the skirts of my fancy as I step over leads and quads, I meditate upon that trite old paradox, "The longest way round is the nearest way home." I feel much as though, in response to a kind inquiry for his health, my friend had treated me to a diagnosis of his disease, had made the egregious blunder, in short, of supposing that I was deeply interested in all the complicated details of the malady from which he is suffering. The chances are, too, that as my eyes wander through the labyrinth of incidents and accidents on the pages of my paper, I encounter the announcement that the enterprising publisher contemplates increasing its area by a column or so, and that hereafter he will issue a double sheet on certain days of the week. Heavens! I ejaculate. More "news?" Perhaps he has a fertile fancy,— or a long exchange list, which is much the same thing, and means to pad his telegrams with "punjaub," i. e. snake and fish stories, sailors' yarns, reporters' vagaries, bad poetry, and worse jokes! I am utterly undone. Why do you read the papers if they offend you so? my friend inquired, not without reason. He don't understand me, though. I am quite as eager for news as he is; but I want news, and I refuse to be satisfied with anything else. I do not want persiflage and poetry, scandal and claptrap. I would like to have pithy and pungent telegrams, pertinent observations "boiled down" and left to simmer. My friend suggests that there are plenty of those in our daily papers. He instances the Twinkler. I know all about the Twinkler. It is a very good paper in some respects-ah! that saving clause! It shares, alas! the common fault. Its merit is too widely dif fused. Its pages are filled with the rank vegetation of the sanctum. To get at the news I must wade through a reportorial marsh which almost swamps me. Yet I feel obliged to read every word in the Twinkler. I have some personal pride, I would have you know, and I choose to protect myself against embarrassing inquiries. It may be that I am an unfortunate wretch; but this I know, that as sure as I skip a column, a paragraph, or even one of those dispiriting puns, my friend accosts me, and says in a suggestive manner: "I suppose you saw Thundergun's latest in the Twinkler this morning?" My shame-faced negation astounds him. He stares blankly, and so pities my dullness, my mental inertia, that he undertakes to tell me the whole thing with much verbiage! of thought than is desirable. What proportion do you suppose of the readers of our daily papers take the trouble to think out for themselves any knotty question of finance or economy? Do not the vast majority of them accept their opinions ready-made from the press? Unfortunately, the average individual is not a person of such broad intelligence, nor is he fired with such an inextinguishable purpose to get knowledge, that he can wholly resist the temptation, or at least escape the influence, brought to bear upon him by a protracted series of editorials. He finds in it what seems to him a free discussion of the subject at issue, but what is really in most cases a purely If Mr. C enlarges the Twinkler-and he will-I shall have to read its extra columns and its double-sheet edition with stoical persistence, or reconcile myself to the ignominious position of a person who is "behind the times." If the news-partisan view; he sees an imposing array of argupaper editors and proprietors would only give us less to read, would store the grain, but send the chaff adrift, how enviable would be the lot of their subscribers! Conversely, if the public taste were more uniform and more correct, if only two people would hold the same opinion occasionally, how easy would be the task of getting out a good paper! ments, he absorbs conclusions promulgated with a for one kind of weather, that they are after all the fallible opinions of a man and not the inspired utterances of an oracle. Such is the strange deference with which the press ever surrounds itself. Thus, by the subtle sophistries of an interested editor, are we enticed into a habit of superficial thought and inconsequent reasoning. The idea that the daily newspapers set up for autocrats and educators is little more than a beautiful fallacy. The most independent of them all is a mere parasite on the body politic. It is a repository of opinions, an exponent of public taste, and no one but a fatuous theorist would expect it to be anything else. We recognize in our newspapers the agency of men of business, seeking favor and subscribers. If in a moment of lofty indignation we deplore this prostitution of the press in high-sounding phrases and dolorous com Mr. C― observes that he has taken warning from the awful fate of the man who tried to pub-getting that their particular fabric only fits him lish a paper that would please everybody. That man has degenerated into a babbling idiot. Ah, me! But all the same, I sigh for a paper bristling with terse observations delivered in a clear, incisive style, arranged in a compact and convenient form, not spread in a thin layer over so much space. A few editions of the Twinkler would pad a good-sized carpet, and I must cut it up in sections if I want to read it on the street-cars, or else beg the privilege of spreading it like an afghan over my neighbor's kness. Above all, I want a paper which I can read in less than a half a day. I am a person of comparative leisure; but, if I undertake to read the Twinkler every day, not to speak of the Dazzler, which appears in the afternoon, I have not much time to spare. What chance, then, I ask you, has the ordinary man of business to gain the most casual acquaintance with general literature, if he reads his paper carefully?plaints, let us remember that we have contributed I suppose that if it were to be conceded that our papers are too voluminous, the question of reducing their size would incite many a quarrel. How the general public would deride the suggestion that we should have no more editorials! Yet would not that be a desirable contingency? It seems very clear to me that our present system of editing a paper tends to create less independence our influence to the formation of its character. It would not require a Herculean effort to eliminate the grossest faults that now mar the effectiveness of our papers. It would not, for instance, be a difficult matter to disabuse the journalist's mind of that odd idea that he secures a stronger hold upon the public by discarding the last vestiges of that scholarly style which formerly distinguished his fraternity. It would indeed be unjust for us to expect irreproachable diction of a man who is forced to grind out "copy," in the mood or out of it, with hardly leisure enough to read over what he has written, much less revise it. We expect no rhetorical miracles. We do not ask the editor to mend his style, but we beg him to refrain from mutilating it. It is distressing to notice the apparent paucity of expression that hampers the pens of our journalists. They have reared a new family of words and phrases, squalid and sickly, the progeny of vulgar colloquialisms. They have immersed their editorials in a fountain —a river—an ocean of slang. It is such a convenient thing with which to round a period! It has force if it has not elegance, and then this bizarre style of writing is the fashion. What a strange defense! No one adopts the lingo of a prize-fighter as his model in drawing-room conversation. No one talks slang in the beau monde. These loose-jointed words are the relaxations we allow ourselves occasionally when we chat with an intimate friend. We are forced to forego them in public. How is it that the editor whose utterances are the cynosure of every eye indulges himself with impunity in such verbal license simply because he can hide his personality behind the screen of his paper? American newspapers, while they are in many respects peerless and above reproach, have faults peculiarly their own. They are astute, far-sighted, sound in logic, quick of wit, not without appreciation or devoid of taste, and, above all, full of enterprise, and of an indomitable determination to keep up with the times. But these qualities fail to elicit their meed of commendation, because they are shorn of their greatest glory, pure diction and fine phraseology-also because they are tainted with that sensationalism which is the bane alike of our literature and art. It would, perhaps, seem as though we were pushing our prerogative if we ventured to decide what was to be tabooed and what was not. It cannot, however, be taken in bad part if we suggest that our papers are too deeply steeped in gore. It is not the most desirable thing in the world to have the coming generation brought up on blood and thunder. The evils of such a system of nourish ment were very strongly suggested to my mind by an occurrence of a few days ago. A lad of about fourteen years of age, whose parents are poor, unlettered people, asked me if I would not give him a certain copy of the New York Herald which I had. The request surprised me. He had never asked for the paper before, and I knew that he took more kindly to the Clipper. Upon inquiry, however, I discovered that he was anxious to obtain the Herald because he had been told that it contained a most minute and graphic account of the late murder in Hoboken! And here I may observe that I have been very much gratified by the intelligence that a bill has been introduced into the Michigan Legislature imposing a fine of $1000 and imprisonment for a year on any person publishing an account of a murder or hanging. Very few thoughtful people presume to deny that the tendency of this charnel-house literature is to increase the percentage of crime in our midst. I can easily comprehend the verdict of that New York jury which ascribed the late suicide of a young girl in that city to an overwrought fancy worked up to the fatal pitch by brooding over current accounts of similar acts of desperation. The melo-drama of our newspapers is too vulgar to exert any influence over older and more intelligent persons; but its effect upon the young and unreasoning mind can easily be understood by one who is sensible of the subtle power wielded over the most refined and cultivated by a certain class of writers. I cannot conceive of a more effective stimulant to morbid tastes than the stories of Mr. Edgar Poe. I should not like to be held responsible for their effects upon the mind and conduct of any one who was given to their constant perusal. Yet the carefully worked up accounts of tragic denouements which appear in our papers from day to day are even more insinuating and seductive to some persons, and they are more widely circulated. This gratification of a morbid fancy for horrible details is, of course, the worst phase of sensationalism; but the same spirit crops out in a hundred ways. One of the shallowest and most ridiculous devices of the newspapers to attract attention partakes of this character. I have in mind the headline mania. A journalist once told me that it was much more difficult to write a head-line than to write an article. That depends, I think. If it is to be a simple, unassuming title, it will spring up of itself; if it must be an illustrated index and table of contents with preface attached, it will need to be carefully cultivated. I can understand |