Look at an article by Forbes or
McGahan or Burleigh--an article wherein the words seem alive--and then
run over a doleful production of some complacent hack, and the
astounding range that divides the zenith of journalism from the nadir
may at once be seen. The poor hack has all his little bundle of
phrases tied up ready to his hand; but he has no brain left, and he
cannot rearrange his verbal stock-in-trade in fresh and vivid
combinations. The old, old sentences trickle out in the old, old way.
Our friends, "the breach than the observance," "the cynosure of all
eyes," "the light fantastic toe," "beauty when unadorned," "the poor
Indian," and all the venerable army come out on parade. The weariful
writer fills up his allotted space; but he does not give one single
new idea, and we forget within a few minutes what the article
pretended to say--in an hour we have forgotten even the name of the
subject treated.
As one looks around on the corps of writers now living, one feels
inclined to ask the old stale question, "And pray what time do you
give yourself for thinking?" The hurrying reporter or special
correspondent needs only to describe in good prose the pictures that
pass before his eye; but what is required of the man who stays at home
and spins out his thoughts as the spider spins his thread? He must
take means to preserve his own freshness, or he grows more and more
unreadable with a rapidity which lands him at last among the helpless,
hopeless dullards; if he persists in expending the last remnants of
his ideas, he may at last be reduced to such extremities that he will
be forced to fill up his allotted space by describing the interesting
vagaries of his own liver.
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