This experience gave me, in certain respects, an entire change of heart. I will never think hard again of an editor though he does not return my manuscript even if I send stamps. I will still continue to think kindly of him though he “declines with thanks.” For I realize now that the “editor” who would do his duty must have nerves of steel and a heart of stone.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
OPINIONS JOURNALISTIC.
For five years I wrote for many papers in San Francisco and wrote some things good, some bad, some indifferent. I attacked and ridiculed the errors and foibles of others with the miraculous confidence and inferred self-righteousness of a man who had not as yet begun to realize his own shortcomings. I assailed abuses and was sometimes disgusted at what then I deemed the timidity and lack of nerve on the part of newspaper publishers, when they refused to print my tirades, reproofs, and sarcasms. As a champion I was very brave to speak on paper in the privacy of my own room. As a man with no capital at stake, I was very wise in showing others where to put their money.
I was rated in San Francisco as a “Bohemian” and deserved the name. I was largely in sympathy with the idea that life being short should be worked at a rapid pace for all that could be got out of it, and that we the dwellers on the top floor of intellect were justified in regarding with a certain scorn the duller and generally wealthier plodders on the lower floors of business. We were as proud of our comparative poverty and disregard of money because we held in some way we never could explain that such poverty argued for us the possession of more brains, though we were very glad to receive our money from people we deemed ourselves so far above. I think this is all nonsense.
I think now that the ability to express ideas well on paper is a vastly over-rated and over-praised talent. A man may write well and not have sufficient executive ability to build a hen coop or govern one after it is built, and brains play a very important part in any kind of managerial ability, be the field large or small.
Bohemianism as it existed thirty years ago is nearly dead. It has been discovered that late hours, gin, and nocturnal out-pourings of wit, brain, and brilliancy, do not increase the writer’s originality, or fertility of idea, and that a great deal of force is wasted at such times which should be turned into dollars and cents.
A man or woman to-day who succeeds permanently with the pen will not only live well-ordered lives, but possess a business ability outside of the pen, in order to get their ideas before the public. Never before were there so many writers, and never before so many able writers. The literary mediocrity of to-day would have made a brilliant reputation sixty years ago. But of those who are merely writers, even if good writers, three-fourths as regards compensation are almost on the same relative plane as the type-writer. The supply is greater than the demand. People must write even if not paid for the pleasure of seeing their ideas in print, and for this reason to-day do we find country weeklies furnished regularly free of expense with interesting correspondence from abroad by the editor’s travelling friends.
As a newspaper man and correspondent, I was not always very particular in writing about people, and dragging their personality before the public. I wanted subjects and something or somebody to write about. These were my capital stock in trade.
I don’t wonder that a certain unpopularity with a class attaches itself to “newspaper men,” “correspondents” and reporters. The tendency and temptation is to become social Paul Pry’s, especially when family or individual secrets will swell a column and bring dollars. Of all this I did my share, and regard myself now with small favor for so doing.
The freedom of the Press has developed Press freebooters male and female, and the Press has now all the freedom of the village gossip.