SET THE NEWS FLYING
until a rival journalist “got on to it.” When the news is actually made public through his paper, he has no further interest in it. It is a lemon that has been sucked, and has now no piquancy for him. This is his attitude towards the information he gleans that is published, but still more reticent is he in regard to what he does not publish. The reporter, bit by bit, loses, like the doctor and the lawyer, his faith in human nature. Like them he often gets glimpses in the back corners of people’s characters, which back corners are as guiltily hidden from the eye of man as the favorite sultana of an eastern monarch. As he goes along the street he sees many men who know him not, but whom he knows well. He knows of certain facts concerning them which the rest of the world knows nothing of. He sees them in places of honor and trust, in the mart, and in the church, and in the ball-room, and yet he knows that were those little damaging occurrences “learned by rote and cast into his teeth,” the trader, the deacon and the partner in the dance would shun them like lepers and pass by on the other side. Many a reputation is saved by his leniency. One of his commonest experiences, next to requests to put in certain names in his paper, is requests to keep others out. Gentlemen who have had the misfortune to appear before the Magistrate in the morning are the most frequent attenders in reportorial rooms for this purpose. They have first made application to the reporter in the Police court, and he has referred them to the city editor. That gentleman generally asks, Why should the report be mutilated for the purpose of keeping your name out of the paper? He points out that the public pay their money for a paper with the understanding that all the city happenings that came under