never thought, during my residence at Vienna, that because I have the honor of being a public servant of the American people I am deprived of the right of discussing within my own walls the gravest subjects that can interest freemen.  A minister of the United States does not cease to be a citizen of the United States, as deeply interested as others in all that relates to the welfare of his country.”

Among the “occasional American visitors” spoken of above must have been some of those self-appointed or hired agents called “interviewers,” who do for the American public what the Venetian spies did for the Council of Ten, what the familiars of the Inquisition did for the priesthood, who invade every public man’s privacy, who listen at every key-hole, who tamper with every guardian of secrets; purveyors to the insatiable appetite of a public which must have a slain reputation to devour with its breakfast, as the monster of antiquity called regularly for his tribute of a spotless virgin.

The “interviewer” has his use, undoubtedly, and often instructs and amuses his public with gossip they could not otherwise listen to.  He serves the politician by repeating the artless and unstudied remarks which fall from his lips in a conversation which the reporter has been invited to take notes of.  He tickles the author’s vanity by showing him off as he sits in his library unconsciously uttering the engaging items of self-portraiture which, as he well knows, are to be given to the public in next week’s illustrated paper.  The feathered end of his shaft titillates harmlessly enough, but too often the arrowhead is crusted with a poison worse than the Indian gets by mingling the wolf’s gall with the rattlesnake’s venom.  No man is safe whose unguarded threshold the mischief-making questioner has crossed.  The more unsuspecting, the more frank, the more courageous, the more social is the subject of his vivisection, the more easily does he get at his vital secrets, if he has any to be extracted.  No man is safe if the hearsay reports of his conversation are to be given to the public without his own careful revision.  When we remember that a proof-text bearing on the mighty question of the future life, words of supreme significance, uttered as they were in the last hour, and by the lips to which we listen as to none other,—­that this text depends for its interpretation on the position of a single comma, we can readily see what wrong may be done by the unintentional blunder of the most conscientious reporter.  But too frequently it happens that the careless talk of an honest and high-minded man only reaches the public after filtering through the drain of some reckless hireling’s memory,—­one who has played so long with other men’s characters and good name that he forgets they have any value except to fill out his morning paragraphs.