invariably followed by spells of excessively hard work, in which the staying powers of the reporter are severely tested. Occasionally his working hours are extended without notice or warning to sixteen or more in the twenty-four. For the greater part of . that time he may be driving all his energies at express speed, having no opportunity for a comfortable meal, and, it may be, compelled to do his business under the most disturbing and unhealthy conditions.

Setting out early in the morning for an important engagement a long distance off, he may arrive at his destination just in time to begin note-taking. At the end of the meeting, or function, he may be required to hurry back to the railway station to catch his returning train, and have barely time to snatch a refreshment before resuming his journey. During all the time he is travelling home he may be busily engaged with the transcription of his notes, or with a descriptive article. Tired and wearied on his return to the office, he may find his expectations of a quiet evening rudely destroyed by a call to assist in the investigation of some tragedy, or he may be sent to learn the details of a great conflagration, or he may have to hurry to an important meeting which will occupy him till long past midnight. Only men of exceptionally strong constitutions can hope to stand up long under

the harassing duties of a profession which refuses to regard headaches or colds as excuses for the nonfulfilment of engagements, which repeatedly refuses to its members time for meals or for change of clothing after exposure to drenching showers, and which frequently demands two or three days' ordinary work to be compressed into the space of time between waking and sleeping. Nobody in weak health should ever think of becoming a reporter.

The second essential is superior intelligence. In the olden time, when the systems of shorthand in use were primitive and unsatisfactory in the extreme, and when writers for the press were required to trust mainly to their memories in the preparation of their reports, the remark was not infrequently made that the reporter must be at least as well informed a man as the speaker whose address or lecture he reproduced. As a matter of fact, he was expected to make rather than to report speeches, and to assign them to some public man with whose views they were supposed to be in harmony. In these days the shorthand writer who is a reporter does not require to depend mainly on his trained memory or his intelligence for the production of an accurate or satisfactory report. Nevertheless, in order to make his mark in his profession, he must be a man of wide reading and superior intellectual capacity, who is constantly improving his mind. For weeks and months at a time verbatim note-taking may form only a small part of his duty. Paragraph writing, too often done hastily and carelessly, ought to be regarded as an exercise affording scope for the display of the highest literary skill; and nowadays no man ought to be satisfied with his attainments unless he is a good paragraphist. Members of the same staff, or of different staffs, may help each other's development greatly by a generous rivalry in this kind of work. Every reporter should strive to be able to put the pith of a column-long speech in a few sentences, so expressed and constructed that the speaker will not feel that he has been misrepresented, and that the reader will be able to realise in some measure the nature of the views which have been advocated, the argumentative force with which they have been presented, and the graphic literary dress in which they have been clothed.

Descriptive work forms a large portion of the reporter's duties. New railway lines, enlarged waterworks, improved drainage schemes, the plans of new townships, the architectural features of some imposing building or monument, the latest scientific improvements introduced into a gaswork or some great industrial concern, the equipments of the leviathan

steamship, the most novel features of the most powerful locomotive, the attractions and comforts of a model village, the distresses of an industrial community during a period of commercial depression or strife,—these, and a hundred other aspects of modern life in all its developments calling for public notice, engage the descriptive pen of the reporter. Unless he is able to perform this part of his work in a way that will interest and instruct the public generally, and at the same time satisfy the fastidious tastes of the experts, the paper with which he is connected will suffer more or less discredit.

A third qualification which may be noted here is truthfulness or impartiality. The reporter must keep himself as absolutely free from malice as a judge, otherwise he will subject the proprietors of his paper to costly litigation, and bring his own career to an ignominious end. He must seek to master any tendency to exaggeration or depreciation or caricature he may have, and write with the strictest possible loyalty to fact. By following this simple rule he will win confidence for himself and respect for the journal he represents. He will also have the satisfaction of securing for it readers who may be entirely opposed to, or out of sympathy with, its political teaching.

It does not require a journalistic expert to distin

cnce.

guish between a good, a bad, and an indifferent report. The intelligent reader can quickly discern the differ

Unless an absolutely verbatim reproduction of the ipsissima verba of the orator is required, the journalist will best show his competence and his qualifications who strips the speech of all introductory formalities and unnecessary verbiage or redundancy; who corrects grammatical errors and removes structural inelegancies; who never leaves unexplained a passage or phrase suggested by some incident in the meeting, such as a call from a dissentient or a cheer from a sympathiser ; who brings out the temper of the audience by the notices he introduces of the characteristic or peculiar interruptions, and, when a

scene ” occurs, succeeds in presenting a literary photograph of it, without the use of a word suggestive of partiality or of onesidedness.

Two reporters equally skilled in the use of phonography, and even equally anxious to tell the truth, may produce work fitted to create quite different impressions as to the oratorical effectiveness of the speaker, or as to the feeling or responsiveness of the audience he has addressed.

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