Connecticut western news., 1898-02-24

authOf) nad to slG on the WlnuOW, be- cause there was only one chair. Lin naus sold his splendid work for ducat De Foe, the author of so many volumes, died penniless. The learned Johnson dined behind screen because his clothes were too shabby to allow him to dine with the gentlemen who on the other side of the screen were ap- plauding his works. And so on down to the present time literary toll is great struggle for bread. The world seems to have grudge against a man who, as they say, gets his living by his wits, and the day laborer says to the man of literary toll, '1ou come down here and shove plane, and hammer Q shoe last, and break cobblestones, and earn an honest living as l do instead of sitting there in idleness scribbling." But there are no harder worked men in all the earth than the newspaper people of this country. It is not a matter of hard times; it is characteristic at all times. Men have better appreciation for that which appeals to the stomach than for that which appeals to the brain. They
  and intellectual exhaustion of the news paper press. Oh, men of tEe press, it' will be great help to you if when you get home late at night Jagged out and nervous with your work you would inst kneel down and commend your case to God, who has watched all the fatigues of the day and the night and who has promised to be your God and the God of your children forever!
 Perverted Appetltes.
 Another great trial of the newspaper profession is the diseased appetite for unhealthy intelligence. You blame the newspaper press for giving such promi- hence to murders and scandals. Do you suppose that so many papers would give prominence to these things if the people did not demand them? If l go into the meat market of q foreign city aud 1 find that the butchers hang up on the most conspicuous hooks meat that Is tainted, while the meat that is fresh and sayory is put away without any special care, come to the conclusion that the people of that city love tainted meat. You know very we'll that if the great mass of people in this country get hold of a newspaper and there are in it no runa. way matches, no broken up families, no defamation of men in high position, they pronounce the paper insipid. They say, Ut is shockingly dull tonight" l believe it is one of the trials of the news paper press that the people of this coun- try demand moral slush instead of heal thy and intellectual food. Now you are a respectable man, an intelligent man. and a paper comes into your hand. You open it, and there are three columns of splendidly written editorial, Iecom- mending some moral sentiment or evolv ing some scientific theory. In the next column there is miserable, contempti- ble divorce case. Which do you read first? You dip into the editorial long enough to say, Well, that's very ably written. and you read the divorce case from the long primer type at the top to the nonpareil type at the bottom, and then you ask your wife if she has read it. Oh, it is only case of supply and demand Newspaper men are not fools. They know what you want, and they give it to you. I believe that if the church and the world bought nothing but pure, honest, healthful newspapers nothing but pure, honest and healthful newspapers would be published. If yop should gather all the editors and the re- porters of this country in one great con. vention and ask of them what kind of paper they would prefer to publish, l believe they would unanimously say, We would prefer to publish an elevat- ing paper" So long as there is all in- iquitous demand there will be an in- iquitops supply. make no apology for a debauched newspaper, but l am say ing these things in order to divide the responsibility between those who print and those who read.
 Another temptation of the newspaper profession is the great allurement that surrounds them. Every occupation and profession has temptations peculiar to itself, and the newspaper profession is not an exception. The great demand as you know, is on the nervous force, and the brain is racked. The laundering political speech must read well for the sake of the party, and so the reporter or the editor has to make 1t read well, although every sentence were catastro- phe to the English language. The re. porter must hear all that an inaudible speaker who thinks it is vulgar to speak out says, and it must be right the next morning or the next night in the papers, though the night before the whole audi enee sat with it's hand behind its ear in vain trying to catch it. This man must go through killing night work. He must go into heated assemblagen and into un- ventilated audience rooms that arc snough to take the life out of him. He must visit courtrooms which are almost always disgusting with rum and tobac. co. He must expose himself at the fire. He must write in fetid alleyways Added to all that he must have nasty mastication and irregular habits. To bear up under this tremendous nervous strain they are tempted to artificial stimulus, and how many thousands have gone down under their pressure God only knows. They must have some- thing to counteract the wet, they must have something to keep out the chill and after a scant nights sleep they must have something to revive them for the mornings work. This is what made Horace Greeley such a stout temperance man. 1 said to him, "Mr. Greeley, why are you more eloquent on the subject of temperance than any other subject?" II q best friends i'll journalism go down un der intemperanee.
 Oh, my dear brother of the newspaper profession, what you cannot do without artificial stimulus God does not want you to do! There is no half way ground for our literary people between teetotal. ism and dissipation. Your professional success, your domestic peace, your eter- nal salvation, will depend upon your theories in regard to artificial stimulus