The new North-west. [volume] (Deer Lodge, Mont.) 1869-1897, 1874-01-24
!" Cath as a Correspondent.
From Letter in Danbury News.

Next comes, speaking commercially, the
most successful correspondent in the pro
fession.
GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND.
or & Gath, = Of the Chicago Tribune, Gin
cini1ati Commercial, and st. Louis Republs-
caascombination. He succeeded poor Knowl-
ton, by whose death journalism lost a
brilliant representative, and society, ge-
NAL, chivalrous, esteemed gentleman.
Townsend had long been the regular cor
respondent of the Chicago Tribune and
New York Herald. With the former jour-
nal he has contract for one thousand col
umns of matter to be furnished in two years
at twenty dollars a column. He has carte
blanche from the Herald at thirty dollars a
coiumn lie is also the representative of
the ssaw York Graphic, having succeeded
Hinton recently. In addition to these he
contributes largely to the magazines and
literary newspapers, and turns out book
or two every year. He is the hardest work.
er in the profession, and can accomplish
more in given time than any two men in
or ont of the Row. No one man could even
cory the amount of manuscript he sends to
the printer every week. He dictates his
letters to stenographers, who convert them
into copy. A letter that he rattles off in
half an hour will keep one of them into the
wee sma' hours" getting ready for the
morning mail. He keeps two or three reg
ularly in his pay and frequently employs
extras.
Somebody described Townsend the other
Gay as an intellectual vagabond," using
the term, presume, in sense to express
his versatility. He is certainly literary
Free Lance. There is no cause in which
lie scorns to serve, and he serves all faith
iully and well during the term ofhis pledge.
Did anybody ever see anything from the
pen of "Gath " that was not readable? [
think not. And yet can anyone tell the
next week what it was all about? He is
light, sparkling, crisp in gossip, keen, in
sisive, unsparing in criticism. One reads
the one with sense Of pleasure and the 9TH
er with sense of gratitude that he is not
the victim-forgets them both in day.
H Townsend has struck the mother lode in
light journalism, the same being rich in
fancy but leaving not enough of fact to pay
for working. The man who to-day serves
up dish of bristling facts wastes his time,
for nobody reads them; but he who crlls
out few of the juiciest and dresses them
with the capers and condiments of pungent
fancy win never lack for tastes to appreci-
ate them. This, Townsend understands
full well, and he eaters to the taste most
acceptably. A single fact in his hands is
enough for a basis, and even this may be
dispensed with in an emergency. smoth-
srlasff It in mountain of imagery, he cap
ty of it is ffYho fHso partake of it, and the beau
yeaars ara ,,o eoome again. Eight or ten
the tonr 80 80, .of th> time, went to Europe,
made on foot. Gs Dufihg fH1s the fasesge TO Eng
land he wrote description of Paris, which
hi mailed to his journal from Liverpool on
fist landing. 1t was copied extensively in
tie press of this country and Europe, and
was pronounced the best that had ever APP
peared in print. He had never been in Pa
ris, and the only data he had was such as
he had CLEANED from prosers like Bayard
Taylor.