upon these markings.  Two things conspire to give to the results a capricious and unbalanced look:  his assistants have diversified notions as to what is dangerous and what isn’t; he can’t get time to examine their criticisms in much detail; and so sometimes the very same matter which is suppressed in one paper fails to be damned in another one, and gets published in full feather and unmodified.  Then the paper in which it was suppressed blandly copies the forbidden matter into its evening edition—­provokingly giving credit and detailing all the circumstances in courteous and inoffensive language—­and of course the censor cannot say a word.

Sometimes the censor sucks all the blood out of a newspaper and leaves it colourless and inane; sometimes he leaves it undisturbed, and lets it talk out its opinions with a frankness and vigour hardly to be surpassed, I think, in the journals of any country.  Apparently the censor sometimes revises his verdicts upon second thought, for several times lately he has suppressed journals after their issue and partial distribution.  The distributed copies are then sent for by the censor and destroyed.  I have two of these, but at the time they were sent for I could not remember what I had done with them.

If the censor did his work before the morning edition was printed, he would be less of an inconvenience than he is; but, of course, the papers cannot wait many minutes after five o’clock to get his verdict; they might as well go out of business as do that; so they print and take their chances.  Then, if they get caught by a suppression, they must strike out the condemned matter and print the edition over again.  That delays the issue several hours, and is expensive besides.  The Government gets the suppressed edition for nothing.  If it bought it, that would be joyful, and would give great satisfaction.  Also, the edition would be larger.  Some of the papers do not replace the condemned paragraphs with other matter; they merely snatch they out and leave blanks behind—­mourning blanks, marked ‘Confiscated’.

The Government discourages the dissemination of newspaper information in other ways.  For instance, it does not allow newspapers to be sold on the streets:  therefore the newsboy is unknown in Vienna.  And there is a stamp duty of nearly a cent upon each copy of a newspaper’s issue.  Every American paper that reaches me has a stamp upon it, which has been pasted there in the post-office or downstairs in the hotel office; but no matter who put it there, I have to pay for it, and that is the main thing.  Sometimes friends send me so many papers that it takes all I can earn that week to keep this Government going.