The Monitor-register., 1896-03-27

most successful way to sink money and
keep it sunk is to start q
There comes a time when almost every
one is smitten with the newspaper mania
and starts one, or have stock in one he
must or die.
The course OF procedure is about this:
A literary man has an agricultural or
scientific or political or religious idea
which he wants to ventilate. He has no
money OF his own-literary men seldom
have. But he talks of his ideas among
I confidential friends until they become
infiamed with the idea, and forthwith
they buy type and press and rent COM
posing room and gather a corps of edi-
tors, and with a prospectus that proposes
to cure everything the first copy is flung
on the attention of an admiring world.
After awhile II of the plain stockhold-
ers finds that no great revolution has
been effected by this daily or weekly
publication that neither sun nor moon
stands still; that the world goes on w.
ing and cheating and stealing just as it
did before the first issue. The aforesaid
matter of fact stakeholder wants to sell
out his stock, but nobody wants to buy,
and other stockholders get infected and
sick OF newspaperdom, and an enormous
bill at the paper factory rolls into an
avalanche, and the printers refuse to
work until back wages are paid up, and
the compositor bows to the managing
editor, and the managing editor bows to
the editor in chief, and the editor in
chief bows to the directors, and the di-
rectors bow to the world at large, and
all the subscribers wonder why their
paper doesn't come. The world will
nave to learn that a newspaper is as
much of an institution as the Bank of
England or Yale college and is not an
enterprise. If you have the aforesaid
agricultural or scientific or religious or
political idea to ventilate, you had bet
ter charge upon the world through the
columns already established. 1t is folly
for any one who cannot succeed at any
thing else to try newspaperdom. If you
cannot climb the hill back of your house,
it is folly to try the sides of the Matter
horn.
Comes Through Fire.
To publish a newspaper requires the
skill, the precision, the boldness, the
vigilance, the strategy of a commander
in chief. To edit a newspaper requires
that one be a statesman, an essayist, a
| ge%ographer. a statistieian, and in ac-
QUESTION encyclopaedia. To man, to
govern, to propel a newspaper until it
shall be a fixed intuition, a national
fact, demand more qualities than my
business on earth. If you feel like start
ing any newspaper, secular or religious,
understand that you are being threat
ened with softening of the brain or lu-
macy, and, throwing your pocketbook in
to your wife's lap, start for some insane
asylum before you do something des-
perate. Meanwhile, as the dead news
papers, week by week, are carried out
to the burial, all the living newspapers
give respectful obituary, telling when
they were born and when they died.
The best printers ink should give at
least one stickful of epitaph. II it was
a good paper, say, "Peace to its ashes"
If it was a bad paper, I suggest the cpl
taph written for Francis Chartreuse F:
"Here continueth to rot the body of
Francis ChartreUse, who, with an in
flexible constancy and uniformity of
life, persisted in the practice of every
human vice, excepting prodigality and
+! hypocrisy. His Unsuitable avarice ex-
empted him from the first, his match
less impudence from the second" / say
this because I want you to know that a
good, healthy, long lived, entertaining
newspaper is not an easy blessing, but
one that comes to us through the fire.
First OF all, newspapers make knowl-
edge democratic and for the multitude,
The public library is a haymow SO high
up that few can reach it, while the
newspaper throws down the forage to
our feet. Public libraries are the reser-
voirs where The great floods are stored
high up aud away off. The newspaper
is h tunnel that brings them down to
the pitchers Of all the people. The chief
use of great libraries is to make news
papers out Of. Great libraries make a
few men aud women very wise. News
papers lift whole nations into the sun
light. Better have so, 900, 900 people
moderately intelligent than 100, 600
solons.
A false impression is abroad that
newspaper knowledge is e%phemeral be-
cause periodicals are thrown aside, and
not one ont of ten thousand people files
them for future reference. Such knowl-
edge, SO far from being ephemeral, goes
into the very structure of the worlds
heart and brain and decides the destiny
of churches and nations. knowledge on
the shelf is of little worth. 1t is knowl-
edge afoot, knowledge harnessed, knowl-
edge in revolution, knowledge winged,
knowledge projected, knowledge thun-
derbolted. So far from being ephem-
eral, nearly all the best minds and hearts
have their hands on the printing press
today and have had since it got emanci-
pated. Adams and Hancock and Otis
used to go to the Boston Gazette and
compose articles on the rights of the
people. Benjamin franklin, De Witt
Clinton, Hamilton, jefferson, Quincy,
were strong in n~ewspaperdom. Many of
! the immortal things that have been pub
lished in book form first appeared in
| what you may call the ephemeral period
ical. All Macaulay's essays first appeared
in a review. All Carlyle's, all Ruskin's,
all Mcintosh s, all Sydney Smiths, all
Hazlitt's. all Thackerary's S, all the ele-
waited works of fiction in our day, are
reprints from periodicals in which
they appeared as serials. Tennyson's
poems, Burns poems, Longfellow's
poems, Emerson's poems, Lowell's
poems, Whittier's poems, were once
fugitive pieces. You cannot find ten lit
erary men in Christendom, with strong
| minds and great hearts. but are or have