But though people continue to abuse the paper for which they subscribe, and for which they are usually some year or two in arrears in the matter of payment, still it appears to me that the public are slowly beginning to comprehend that newspapers are written (mostly) by journalists. Until recently there was, I think, a notion that journalists sat round a bar-parlour telling stories and drinking whisky and water while the newspapers were being produced. The fact is, that most of the surviving anecdotes of the journalists of a past generation smell of the bar-parlour. The practical jesters of the fifties and the punsters of the roaring forties were tap-room journalists. They died hard. The journalists of to-day do not even smile at those brilliant sallies—bequeathed by a past generation—about wearing frock-coats and evening dress, about writing notices of plays without stirring from the taproom, about the mixing up of criticisms of books with police-court reports. Such were the humours of journalism thirty or forty years ago. We have formed different ideas as to the elements of humour in these days. Whatever we may leave undone it is not our legitimate work.
It was when journalism was in a state of transition that a youth, waiting on a railway platform, was addressed by a stranger (one of those men who endeavour to make religious zeal a cloak for impertinence)—“My dear young friend, are you a Christian?”
“No,” said the youth, “I’m a reporter on the Camberwell Chronicle.”
On the other hand, it was a very modern journalist whose room was invaded by a number of pretty little girls one day, just to keep him company and chat with him for an hour or so, as it was the day his paper—a weekly one—went to press. In order to get rid of them, he presented each of them with a copy of a little book which he had just published, writing on the flyleaf, “With the author’s compliments.” Just as the girls were going away, one of them spied a neatly bound Oxford Bible that was lying on the desk for editorial notice.
“I should so much like that,” she cried, pouncing upon it.
“Then you shall have it, my dear, if you clear off immediately,” said the editor; and, turning up the flyleaf, he wrote hastily on it, “With the author’s compliments.”
Yes, he was a modern journalist, and took a reasonable view of the authoritative nature of his calling.
Our position is, I affirm, becoming recognised by the world; but now and again I am made to feel that such recognition does not invariably extend to all the members of our profession. Some years ago I was getting my hair cut in Regent Street, and, as usual, the practitioner remarked in a friendly way that I was getting very grey.