The same ingenious method of promoting virtue by holding up vice to obloquy is pursued in every other field, the learned German told me. The newspapers do not print the names of men who support their wives, but they print the names of men who do not, or who support more than one. They do not publish the photographs of honest bank clerks, but of dishonest ones, and of these only when they have stolen a very large sum. They pay no attention to a clergyman as long as he advocates the brotherhood of man, but they have large headlines about the minister who believes in the moderate use of the Scotch highball. They overlook a college professor's epoch-making researches in American history, and take him up when he comes out in favour of an exclusive diet of raw spinach. From the newspaper point of view, a college professor counts less than a professional gambler; a gambler counts less than an actress; a good actress counts less than a bad one; a bad actress counts less than a prize-fighter; a prize-fighter counts less than a chimpanzee that has been taught to smoke cigarettes; and an educated chimpanzee counts less than a millionaire who suffers from paranoia. By continuously pondering on the horrors of crime and vice as depicted in the newspapers, the American people are roused to such a hatred of evil that some editors receive a salary of $100,000 a year.
Oddly enough, the American people freely criticise their newspapers. One of the commonest charges is that their editors write with great haste and little accurate information. But, Herr Grundschnitt argued, it is unfair to insist that newspapers shall be both forceful and accurate. It is true that the editors who supply the American people with their opinions think fast and write fast, but it is absurd to maintain that as a class they are unreasonably set in their own beliefs. Editors, as a matter of fact, change their opinions every little while. In such cases they usually have no difficulty in proving that, while their present views are right, their previous views were also right. This makes for consistency. Nor is there any reason for maintaining, as is often done, that editors are restive under criticism. The professor declared that there are very few newspapers in the United States that will refuse to print a letter from any one who believes that the paper in question is the only one in town with courage and honesty enough to tell the truth and that it is the best newspaper in the country at the price.
As for the old-fashioned critics who maintain that not even the best newspaper tells more than half the truth, my informant pointed out that every town and village in the United States has at least two daily publications. The conscientious reader who buys both is thus saved from error.
When I rose to say good-night the professor accompanied me to the door, and would not let me go till he had pronounced a final eulogy on the press in general, and the American newspaper in particular. He expatiated on its omnipresence. The printed sheet is with a man when he wakes in the morning, and when he falls asleep at night, and when he is at the breakfast table with his wife. The newspaper breaks up families and reunites other families, though it usually misspells their names. It chastises the rascal, and worries the honest man. It can make a reputation in a day, and destroy a reputation in ten minutes, sending its owner into the grave or upon the vaudeville stage. It teaches Presidents how to rule, women how to win husbands, the Church how to save souls, and middle-aged gentlemen how to reduce weight by exercising ten minutes every day. It knows nearly everything and guesses at the rest. It will say almost anything and publish the rest at advertising rates. Without it, democratic government would be difficult and travelling in the Subway quite impossible. The newspaper is the only institution since the world began that succeeds in being all things to all men for the moderate sum of one cent a day. The only universal things that come cheaper, the professor told me, are birth and death.
IX
A FLEDGLING
A sophomore's soul is not the simple thing that most people imagine. I am thinking now of my nephew Philip and of our last meeting. This time, he was more than usually welcome. I was lonely. The family had just left town for the summer and the house was fearfully empty. I sat there, smoking a cigarette amid the first traces of domestic uncleanliness, when I heard him on the stairs. The dear boy had not changed. Dropping his heavy suitcase anyways, he seized my hand within his own huge paw and squeezed it till the tears came to my eyes. His voice was a young roar. He threw his hat upon the table, thereby scattering a large number of papers about the room, and then sat down upon my own hat, which was lying on the armchair, on top of several July magazines. I had put my hat down on the chair instead of hanging it up, as I should have done, because the family was away and I was alone in the house.
Might he smoke? He was busy with his bull-dog pipe and my tobacco jar before I could say yes. He explained that he was sorry, but he found he could neither read, write, nor think nowadays without his pipe. He admitted that he was the slave of a noxious habit, but it was too late, and he might as well get all the solace he could out of a pretty bad situation. But, as I look at Philip, I cannot help feeling that his fine colour and the sparkle in his blue eyes and his full count of nineteen years make the situation far less desperate than he portrays it. Philip is not a handsome lad, but he will be a year from now. At present he is mostly hands and feet, and his face shows a marked nasal development. Before Philip has completed his junior year, the rest of his features will have reasserted themselves, and the harmony of lineament which was his when he was an infant, as his mother never tires of regretfully recalling, will be restored. Until that time Philip must be content to carry the suggestion of an attractive and eager young bird of prey.
Philip lights pipe after pipe as he dilates on his experiences since last I saw him. The moralising instinct is very weak in me. I cannot find it in my heart to censure Philip's constant mouthing of the pipe. I, too, smoke, and I am not foolish enough to risk my standing with Philip by preaching where I do not practise. Besides, I observe that the boy does not inhale, that his pipe goes out frequently, and that his consumption of matches is much greater than his consumption of tobacco. So I say nothing in reproof of his pipe.