As for journalism, women have invaded the newspaper offices to some purpose, and it is owing to them that the modern newspaper is usually an undistinguished farrago of wild and whirling words, ungrammatical at best, and at its worst a jumble of more or less malicious gossip, without sequence or thread of reason. The ‘lady journalist’ is no respecter of persons or institutions, and an easy impudence is natural to her contributions, whether her subject be peer or peasant. Proportion is in no sense her gift or acquirement: the death of a member of the ‘submerged tenth’ in a court off Fleet Street is more thrilling to her senses than the fall of a statesman from office; the cut of a dress or the shade of a ribbon wears an importance in her eyes that the rise and progress of trades can never win; and the babble of Social Science Congresses, or the lecturing of University Extensionists transcends the Parliamentary debater in her mind. ‘Actuality’ is her shibboleth and gush her output; and the heart actuates her pen rather than the head. The journalist of years bygone was a very different being. His--for the old-time journalist was always masculine--his knowledge of frocks and flounces was _nil_; his habitat was generally a pothouse, and his speech was as often as not thick and husky with potations; but however confused his talk, and however objectionable his personality, his utterances in the press were apt and luminous and he took no bribes. In this last respect the name and trade of a ‘lady journalist’ are somewhat stale and blown upon of late, and she has been revealed as the debaucher of newspaper morality, who, in league with the advertisement department, praises the shoddy goods of the advertising tradesman, while he who relies not upon _réclame_ but on excellence of workmanship is dismissed with faint praise, or mentioned not at all. Worse than this unscrupulous fending for her employer--editor or advertising manager--she stoops to gifts in coin and kind from eager shopkeepers, panting to gain the ear and open the purse of the public, and when she has a fancy for any ‘particular’ article, she begs it with an assurance born of the knowledge that her wishes will not be refused by the tradesman who has that article in his gift. He dare not do so, for his puff would be missing from the ‘organ’ that would otherwise have proclaimed the excellence of his wares to a gulled and gullible world. Certainly, in all the man’s employments she has invaded, in no other is woman so powerful for ill as in journalism. _FINIS._ _LONDON:_ _Printed by Strangeways & Sons, Tower Street, Cambridge Circus, W.C._ [Illustration] _WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR._ ENGLISH PEN ARTISTS OF TO-DAY: Examples of their Work, with some Criticisms and Appreciations. Super royal 4to. £3 3_s._ net. THE BRIGHTON ROAD: Old Times and New on a Classic Highway. With 95 Illustrations by the Author and from Old Prints. Demy 8vo. 16_s._