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all the news and command public confidence, the standing and clientage of the paper cannot be successfully maintained. The endowed paper pictured to us as the ideal paper, run by a board of governors filled in turn by representatives of the various uplift societies enumerated by Professor Ross, would blow hot and would blow cold, would have no consistent policy or principles, would be unable to alter the prevailing notion of what constitutes important news, and would be from the outset busily engaged in a work of news-suppression to suit the whims of the particular hobby-riders who happened for the moment to be in dominating control.'

In journalism, as in statesmanship, the doctrinaire is more confident than the man of affairs. So, in war, the lieutenant is bolder in the thought than the captain in the action. Often the newspaper subaltern, distrusting his chief, calls that 'mercenary' which is in reality 'discrimination.' It is a pity that there is not more of this latter in our editorial practice.

IV

Disinterestedness, unselfish devotion to the public interest, is the soul of true journalism as of true statesmanship; and this is as likely to proceed from the counting-room as from the editorial room; only, the businessmanager must be a journalist.

The journalism of Paris is personal, the journalism of London is impersonal,—that is to say, the one illustrates the self-exploiting, individualized starsystem, the other the more sedate and orderly, yet not less responsible commercial system; and it must be allowed that, in both dignity and usefulness, the English is to be preferred to the French journalism. It is true that English publishers are sometimes

elevated to the peerage. But this is nowise worse than French and American editors becoming candidates for office. In either case, the public and the press are losers in the matter of the service rendered, because journalism and office are so antipathetic that their union must be destructive to both.

The upright man of business, circumspect in his everyday behavior and jealous of his commercial honor, needs only to be educated in the newspaper business to bring to it the characteristic virtues which shine and prosper in the more ambitious professional and business pursuits. The successful man in the centres of activity is usually a worldly-wise and prepossessing person. Other things being equal, success of the higher order inclines to those qualities of head and heart, of breeding and education and association, which go to the making of what we call a gentleman. The element of charm, scarcely less than the elements of energy, integrity, and penetration, is a prime ingredient. Add breadth and foresight, and we have the greater result of fortune and fame.

All these essentials to preeminent manhood must be fulfilled by the newspaper which aspires to preeminence. And there is no reason why this may not spring from the business end, why they may not exist and flourish there, exhaling their perfume into every department; in short, why they may not tempt ambition. The newspapers, as Hamlet observes of the players, are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time. It were indeed better to have a bad epitaph when you die than their ill-report while you live, even from those of the baser sort; how much more from a press having the confidence and respect and yet more than these, the affection — of the community? Hence it is that special college training is beginning to be thought

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of, and occasionally tried; and, while this is subject to very serious disadvantage on the experimental side, its ethical value may in the long run find some way to give it practical application and to make it permanent as an arm of the newspaper service. Assuredly, character is an asset, and nowhere does it pay surer and larger dividends than in the newspaper business.

V

We are passing through a period of transition. The old system of personal journalism having gone out, and the new system of counting-room journalism having not quite reached a full realization of itself, the editorial function seems to have fallen into a lean and slippered state, the matters of tone and style honored rather in the breach than in the observance. Too many illtrained, uneducated lads have graduated out of the city editor's room by sheer force of audacity and enterprise into the more important posts. Too often the counting-room takes no supervision of the editorial room beyond the immediate selling value of the paper the latter turns out. Things upstairs are left at loose ends. There are examples of opportunities lost through absentee landlordism.

These conditions, however, are ephemeral. They will yield before the progressive requirements of a process of popular evolution which is steadily lifting the masses out of the slough of degeneracy and ignorance. The dime novel has not the vogue it once

had. Neither has the party organ. Readers will not rest forever content under the impositions of fake or colored news; of misleading headlines; of false alarums and slovenly writing. Already they begin to discriminate, and more and clearly they will learn to discriminate, between the meretricious and the true.

The competition in sensationalism, to which we owe the yellow press, as it is called, will become a competition in cleanliness and accuracy. The counting-room, which is next to the people and carries the purse, will see that decency pays, that good sense and good faith are good investments, and it will look closer to the personal character and the moral product of the editorial room, requiring better equipment and more elevated standards. There will never again be a Greeley, or a Raymond, or a Dana, playing the rôle of 'star' and personally exploited by everything appearing in journals which seemed to exist mainly to glorify them. Each was in his way a man of superior attainments. Each thought himself an unselfish servant of the public. Yet each had his limitations, his ambitions and prejudices, his likes and dislikes, intensified and amplified by the habit of personalism, often unconscious. And, this personal element eliminated, why may not the impersonal head of the coming newspaper-proud of his profession, and satisfied with the results of its ministration-render a yet better account to God and the people in unselfish devotion to the common interest?

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THE COLORS AT CAMBRIDGE

BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY

[William E. Russell, ex-Governor of Massachusetts, died suddenly while camping in the woods of New Brunswick, and was brought home to be buried at Mount Auburn. It was a week of unusually high wind. These lines were

written at the time.]

FLAGS at half-staff that through the leafy city
Cloud street and hall in tragic mustering;

Flags in the offing, that for noble pity

Make for sea-spaces on a broken wing;

Eagles low-flying, angels of our sorrow,

Boding and bright, on their full passion hurled,
Trail down the wind in stormy wake and furrow,
Poignantly marked across the summer world.

Ah, how they mourn with not-to-be-impeded
Gesture and cry of queens unreconciled,
One sunny strength illimitably needed,
Felled by the Hewer in the northern wild!

Yet if they knew, would these not triumph duly?
Glory, not grief, for him who willed to keep
Pure as the sword some warden angel newly
Draws by the cradle of baptismal sleep.

Green on the summits of the State hereafter,
See what a garland, beautiful, aflame!

Till Time abase them, there on wall and rafter,
Sweeter than jasmine climbs that absent name.

Happy the land that late a field unfavored
Whitens to harvest where the martyrs are,

Knowing (from ways in which she nearly wavered),
This starry dust shall lead her like a star;

Happy the land predestinate to cover
Yet in his youth, the early-laureled guest,
Who in her bosom lays so loved a lover,
Veiling with tears the chantry of his rest.

Flags at half-staff that through the leafy city
Cloud street and hall in tragic mustering;
Flags in the offing, that for noble pity
Make for sea-spaces on a broken wing;

Eagles low-flying, angels of our sorrow,
Boding and bright, in your full passion hurled,
Rise on the wind in stormy wake and furrow,
Rise and rejoice, across the summer world.

Flag from thine heaven in willing fealty lowered,
Hiding thy face upon mine own roof-tree,

Weak with our wound through all this day untoward,
O my Delight! look up, and quicken me:

Flag long-adored, and heart of mine below it,
Run to the mast-head, shake away the pain!

We two have done with death, for we shall know it
Never so touching nor so dear again.

VOL. 106- NO. 1

THE MINISTER AND THE MEN

BY FRANCIS E. LEUPP

WITH the recurrence of the graduation season there is an annual revival of anxiety on the part of the religious press over the prospects of the new crop of young clergymen. There are too many pastors without flocks, we are told, and too many flocks without pastors, because the right man cannot be found for one place or the right place for another man. Some of the commentators ascribe the trouble to the growing unpopularity of the ministry as a calling, and point to the shrinkage in the rolls of some of the well-known theological seminaries. They say that the more gifted of the college graduates prefer the law or medicine, trade or finance, because of its larger pecuniary rewards, or, in the case of young men of independent means, its greater scope and opportunity for influence. The lament is almost universal that the male contingent is dropping out of the congregations, and that the hold of the church upon its women is precariously maintained through appeals to the emotions; and much earnest argument has been put forth to show that a young man of force and spirit would rather cast his life-work where it will bring him into closer relations with his own sex.

Here and there an effort has been made to check the defection by various devices. Sensational preaching from startling texts or with pictorial and other visible illustrations; lectures in costume; odd uses of music; advertising novelties, which would put the patent-medicine men to the blush: these are familiar to all dwellers in cities. We

have seen, too, the institutional church and the family club, with their classes in cookery and music, their gymnasiums and libraries, their billiard-tables and bowling-alleys, their private theatres, their dancing-halls and their supper-rooms. The idea behind these was to do away with the old recognition of a religious quality inherent in one thing and a secular quality in another, by sanctifying all the common occupations and amusements of ordinary life. But the scent of immemorial distinctions still clings to the new establishment; and, though the modern expression of practical Christianity may be a vast improvement upon the ancient worship of the fetish Doctrine, it does not seem quite to have accomplished what it set out to do.

Call it an institution, or a club, or whatever else you will, the centre of activity remains a church; a church presupposes a pastor; and the pastor is assumed to supply the human inspiration and direction of the movement. It is he who must put all these media of ecclesiastical energy to some beneficial use; keep the interest of the young stirred; counsel with the elders; make things move, and move in lines helpful to the moral and spiritual uplifting of the community. If the new mechanism fails, the failure is pretty sure to be attributed to the inefficiency of the engineer. Well, what is the matter with him? It would be hard, in most cases, to say. The farewell words of the English bishop to the rector who was about to remove to another diocese come

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