American children were badly brought up and had very bad manners. The simple fact was that, while he spoke of the children with praise, the rest of the story was merely a sensational invention. One of the marvels of American life is the toleration by decent fathers and mothers of sensational newspapers in their households. Of all the demoralizing influences upon our people, and especially upon our young people, they are the most steadily and pervasively degrading. Horace Greeley once published a tractate entitled, "New Themes for the Clergy," and I would suggest the evil influence of sensation newsmongering as a most fruitful theme for the exhortations of all American clergymen to their flocks, whether Catholic, Jewish, or Protestant. May we not hope, also, that Mr. Pulitzer's new College of Journalism will give careful attention to this subject? As to public questions then demanding attention, the first which I now recall was a bit of international comedy, serving as a prelude to more important matters, and worth mentioning here only as showing a misconception very absurd, yet not without dangers. One morning, as I had just sat down to my office work, there was ushered in, with due ceremony, a young gentleman of light color, Parisian to the tips of his fingers,--in accent, manner, and garb,--who was announced as the charge d'affaires of Haiti. He was evidently under deep concern, and was soon in the midst of a somewhat impassioned statement of his business. It appeared that his government, like so many which had preceded it, after a joyous career of proclamations, revolutions, throat-cutting, confiscation, paper money, and loans, public and private, had at last met a check, and that in this instance the check had come in the shape of a German frigate which had dropped into the harbor of Port-au-Prince, run out its guns, and demanded redress of injuries and payment of debts to Germany and German subjects; and the charge, after dwelling upon the enormity of such a demand, pointed out the duty of the United States to oblige Germany to desist,--in short, to assert the Monroe Doctrine as he understood it.