Backlog Studies eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 186 pages of information about Backlog Studies.

Backlog Studies eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 186 pages of information about Backlog Studies.

The Parson.  It’s enough to read the summer letters that people write to the newspapers from the country and the woods.  Isolated from the activity of the world, they come to think that the little adventures of their stupid days and nights are important.  Talk about that being real life!  Compare the letters such people write with the other contents of the newspaper, and you will see which life is real.  That’s one reason I hate to have summer come, the country letters set in.

The mistress.  I should like to see something the Parson does n’t hate to have come.

Mandeville.  Except his quarter’s salary; and the meeting of the American Board.

The fire-tender.  I don’t see that we are getting any nearer the solution of the original question.  The world is evidently interested in events simply because they are recent.

Our next door.  I have a theory that a newspaper might be published at little cost, merely by reprinting the numbers of years before, only altering the dates; just as the Parson preaches over his sermons.

The fire-tender.  It’s evident we must have a higher order of news-gatherers.  It has come to this, that the newspaper furnishes thought-material for all the world, actually prescribes from day to day the themes the world shall think on and talk about.  The occupation of news-gathering becomes, therefore, the most important.  When you think of it, it is astonishing that this department should not be in the hands of the ablest men, accomplished scholars, philosophical observers, discriminating selectors of the news of the world that is worth thinking over and talking about.  The editorial comments frequently are able enough, but is it worth while keeping an expensive mill going to grind chaff?  I sometimes wonder, as I open my morning paper, if nothing did happen in the twenty-four hours except crimes, accidents, defalcations, deaths of unknown loafers, robberies, monstrous births,—­say about the level of police-court news.

Our next door.  I have even noticed that murders have deteriorated; they are not so high-toned and mysterious as they used to be.

The fire-tender.  It is true that the newspapers have improved vastly within the last decade.

Herbert.  I think, for one, that they are very much above the level of the ordinary gossip of the country.

The fire-tender.  But I am tired of having the under-world still occupy so much room in the newspapers.  The reporters are rather more alert for a dog-fight than a philological convention.  It must be that the good deeds of the world outnumber the bad in any given day; and what a good reflex action it would have on society if they could be more fully reported than the bad!  I suppose the Parson would call this the Enthusiasm of Humanity.

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Backlog Studies from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.