New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1869-10-21
q" INTERVIEWING"

"INTERVIEWING."
Unless an end IL made of this mpudent
business, strangers of celebrity will avoid visit
ing America as surely as if Carlyle's stigma
were indeed vald-as if we were in sober
truth an aggregate of thirty million bores. A
single bore is visitation sufficiently appalling.
Men flee from him as Tam o. Shanter fled from
the Warocks, or Orestes from the Furies. But
how escape the onset of legiOnf what re-
fuge can one seek when they swarm about him
ain mutitudes like which the populous North
"poured never from her frozen loinsp IL any one
thinks the experience light one, let him go
and get celebrated and try it; we predict
that he will lose flesh by the opera
ton.
He will go TO his inn, seeking there to
take his ease, and will find a bore in
his bedroom. Emerging therefrom in wrath
and dismay, he will find bouquet of bores in
his drawing -room seeking to flee, he will find
all his avenues of escape blocked up by bores
of such solid immovable composure, that he
will either have to spring from the window or
precipitate himself over some friendly bal
ustrade. Should he chance however, to emerge
upon tho open air without confusion or dislo-
cation, he will find himself the target upon
which casual bores from every point OF COM
pass continually impinge. He will be
intercepted upon tho trottoir by some
moist and shining bore, not exempt from
the enlivening influence of beer, who,
note book in hand will solicit his opinion upon
difficult and embarrassing subjects He will, per-
haps, DO bearded in the omnibus or cornered
upon the Exchange, and solicited to drop few
observations. All his outgOings and incomings
will DO attended by troops and retinues OF
bores, and his casual utterances will DO printed
at length for the perusal of such bores as are
not able to get at him. If, after these expert
ences, he does not regard renown itself as a
bore, and pine for the sweet neglect which he
knew in the days of his obscurty, he must be
a person of exceptional toughness of fiber and
thickness of cuticle.
While we commiserate in some degree the help
less and abject wretchedncss of the bored, our
livcliest concern is for the borers. Do they
rightly appreciate the attitude which they sus-
tain before gods and menf We do not excu-
sively refer to the small subordinate bore who,
pencil in hand, invades the bedroom; nor to
the large authoritative bore who compels the
smaller one as Jupiter compels.his satellites.
Neither chief nor subaltern have other motive
than to procure and print such particulars con-
corning celebrated persons as they think their
subscribers would like to read. They assume,
and perhaps with isome intelligence, that the
majority of the American people exist in state
of prurient and writhing curiosity concerning
every human creature whom circumstances have
lifted into casual notice. They should
nf
own readers at least. How far does this
prying and indecent curiosity which the smart
and pushing editor strives to satiate extend !
Is it O national attribute 7 Are we indeed not
only nation of bores, as the Chelsea Thersites
pronounces us, but nation of meddlesome
intruding gossips as wellf The spectacle of
great commonwealth stupidity agog, its people
for thirty degrees of longitude standing with
their principal apertures ajar, waiting for the
morning paper to see what the latest distin-
"guished foreigner OF the latest lion of home
growth, has to cay for himself, is not in the
least sublime. On the contrary, it is inexpress-
IDLY ridiculous and absurd. Webster told the
assembled lieges of Rochester that no people
who. like them, had waterfall sixty feet high
ever lost their liberties, and we venture to in
innate to wider audience that no community
which, on light pretexts, adopts this attitude
of open-mouthed, goggling curiosity, ever pre-
served its dignity or the respect of mankind.
Poor Father Hyacinthe would never have
como to America for the sake of peace il he
had known the habits of the typical New-York
reporter The spies of the French police are
not more persevering and ubiquitous than the
Bohemans who have haunted him since Mon
day afternoon. Every step, every motion,
every casual expression, everything that he
has eaten and drunk, everything that he has
read, every person whom he has seen, is set
forth every morning in some of our city Jour
mails, for the qualification of an impertinent
curiosity. But now O new terror has been
added to his situation, and new misery to
human life. The reporters of The World have
undertaken to tell Father Hyacnthe all about
religion, and philosophy, and things, and The
World has undertaken to print their very
valuable remarks. On Tuesday, for instance,
one of the many eminent divines employed by
our contemporary in the reporting line instructed
the distinguished Carmelite in the history and
condition ofireigion in America, analysed the
character of the late Archbishop Hughes,
kindly explained the meaning of Positivism
and IN relation " natural sciences and W