Dr. Samuel Johnson was the first Parliamentary reporter. He got a list of the speakers, then went to his lodgings in a dingy court off Fleet Street and wrote out speeches for the Lords and the Commons. He did this for years and not one of the men so honored is on record as having denied the accuracy of the report(?). Dr. Johnson made the reputations of half a dozen men who are to-day mentioned among the great English orators. They were honorable men, as the world goes, but not one of them, except Edmund Burke, ever acknowledged his indebtedness to Samuel Johnson. I never have known a senator or congressman to thank a Washington correspondent for making his speech presentable to educated eyes. He has been known to grow warm in praise of all classes of humanity, from Tipperary to Muscovy, but never a word of commendation escapes his lips for a newspaper man. He believes in philanthropy, but as Napoleon said to Talleyrand, he "wants it to be a long way off!" (_Je veux seulement que ce soit de la philanthropie lointaine._) With the rise of journalistic chivalry came the search for news. It became a precious prize. The special correspondent and reporter sought it. Truth was to be rescued from oblivion! Facts began to be hunted for like the ambergris and ivory of commerce. At first the search resembled the quest for the Oracle of the Holy Bottle,--a test as to the public's opinion of news. What kind of service did the public want? Adventure followed, as a matter of course, but love of adventure was not the impelling motive. The American newspaper, like the American railroad, developed along new lines. Girardin, who had created all that is worth considering in the French press, had pinned his faith to the _feuilleton_ and the snappy editorial article, with its "one idea only." News was of no account. In the English journal, the supremacy of the editorial page was asserted and maintained. News was desirable but secondary; and there was no hurry about obtaining it. In the Spanish press blossomed--and has ever since bloomed--the paragraph. News was a good thing, if it could be told in a few lines, but generally, alas, dangerous. A paragraph must only be long enough to allow a cigarette to go out while you were reading it. Wax matches cost only a cuarta per box, but cigarettes were expensive. Beaumarchais understood the Spanish press when he put the famous epigram into "Figaro's" lips: "So long as you print nothing, you may print anything." The chivalry of the editor toward his "esteemed contemporary" is a sad and solemn phase of this true commentary.