"That depends entirely upon the nature of the comments," answered Percy. "Nor do I refer entirely to public people. Our wealthy men, and their wives and daughters, are subjected to the same coarse comments. Their personal defects are ridiculed, and the pitiless and ghastly electric light of publicity is turned on their most sacred joys or sorrows. Items devoid of truth and wit, appear every day concerning people who have committed no offense greater than to succeed in some special calling. They are copied, enlarged upon, and believed by a majority of the masses. It is a degenerate system of journalism which permits it. It is high time some manly journalist began a crusade against it." "I agree with you, perfectly," Homer Orton answered. "I would like to have the leading newspapers of the country band together to protect the people from insult and petty libels in their columns: and I would like to see the Imaginary Interviewer done away with by every respectable journal." "What is the Imaginary Interviewer, pray?" queried the Englishman. "He is a reporter, who, if he is refused admittance by any person he wishes to interview, deliberately invents an interview; describes the personality and manufactures the conversation to suit his own taste. No one was ever more misused in this respect than your own Oscar Wilde, unless it was Mrs. Langtry. The most astounding postures and inane remarks were attributed to them by people who never saw them. It is not, however, our first-class journals which have permitted this." "Would you not recommend the abolishing of the interviewer entirely?" suggested Percy. "Certainly not," Homer responded. "The newspaper interviewer is a benefit to the press, to the country, and to all public people who have a name and a reputation to make. That is, when he is a truthful gentleman, and does not abuse the hospitality of those who admit him to their homes." "The school-girl who sends for the autograph of a public man pays him a graceful compliment, and he should write it for her without a murmur." "Just in the same way, the whole public offers a quiet ovation to the man of reputation when an interviewer presents his card. The newspaper would never ask for an interview to publish, unless the masses of its readers desired it. And the interviewer should be met courteously, and the public man should realize that this sort of thing is the duty he pays on fame. If he has positively nothing of interest to say to the interviewer, or is too busily engaged to be interrupted, he should tell the caller so in a respectful and polite manner. Many a public man is badly treated by the reporter in print, because he treated the reporter badly in his house." "But what have you to say of the interviewer who is well treated, and then repays the hospitality he has received by an article bristling with ridicule and untruthful misrepresentations of the personality or conversation of his entertainer? I have known this to occur."