Twenty Years in the Press Gallery: A Concise History of Important Legislation, from the 48th to the 58th Congress; The Part Played by the Leading Men of That Period and the Interesting and Impressive Incidents; Impressions of Official and Political Life I

Excerpt from Twenty Years in the Press Gallery: A Concise History of Important Legislation, From the 48th to the 58th Congress; The Part Played by the Leading Men of That Period and the Interesting and Impressive Incidents; Impressions of Official and Political Life in Washington

These tip the beam in the critic's mind and heart; they qualify his scepticism; they revitalize his faith in human nature; they give him something honestly to admire, and, as will be Observed in the sketches here rendered, the writer and reporter, in nothing corrupted by the nether world of which he has learned so much, but in which he lives apart, is quick to see the good, to separate the wheat from the chaff, to seize the salient points and to give them each its place in the moving picture, which, as it rolls out of sight, becomes history.

Sometimes, when I have thought of the many toilers of soul and brain, of discretion and wisdom and wit, whom I have served with, whom I have seen go to their account unknown among men, the Silent Singers Of the Press, as I have called them - and have contrasted them with the many they helped into celebrity and power - I have doubted whether the newspaper is not after all a device Of those evil spirits - witches of the blasted heath - who come and go upon life's weary way to lure the impressionable and aspiring to their doom; and yet, what boots it - a line or two the more, or less, in the reference books, and then - no more!

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