Our papers and magazines even to-day abound with the work of the rehasher. It is just as good for the young readers. Every ten years a generation comes along for whom the rehash is quite new. They do not know that it is the same old hash written and read years and years ago by people dead and gone. The pretentious magazines dish up more or less of this hash. It is served up in style, garnished with sprigs of fine language and sentiment and has often a “dressing” of elegant illustrations poured over it. But it’s the same old hash for all that. If you look over the magazines for a period say of twenty years, you will find these rehashes--articles descriptive of Rome, Egypt, London, the Bayeaux tapestry, travels in countries worn footsore by travellers for generations, the essay on Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe. As for the frontier romance and “Wild Injun” story, that has been ground and reground into hash so fine that it has become “spoon victuals,” and is eaten only by the young and callow of the reading brood. A literary colleague, who commands an editorial chair, says that he allows his rehashers to serve him the same article four times, providing the garnishing and dressing of the dish show artistic cookery. But he shuts down after that. This is not only charitable on his part, but possibly a great benefit to the rehasher, for if he is allowed to go on unchecked, the mental rehashing process will become automatic, the result of which will be the unconscious rehashing of the same article through all eternity. This experience gave me, in certain respects, an entire change of heart. I will never think hard again of an editor though he does not return my manuscript even if I send stamps. I will still continue to think kindly of him though he “declines with thanks.” For I realize now that the “editor” who would do his duty must have nerves of steel and a heart of stone. CHAPTER XXXIV. OPINIONS JOURNALISTIC. For five years I wrote for many papers in San Francisco and wrote some things good, some bad, some indifferent. I attacked and ridiculed the errors and foibles of others with the miraculous confidence and inferred self-righteousness of a man who had not as yet begun to realize his own shortcomings. I assailed abuses and was sometimes disgusted at what then I deemed the timidity and lack of nerve on the part of newspaper publishers, when they refused to print my tirades, reproofs, and sarcasms. As a champion I was very brave to speak on paper in the privacy of my own room. As a man with no capital at stake, I was very wise in showing others where to put their money.