The editor knew, if Irv did not. He knew that the hour of midnight sees the birth of many of the ablest and most influential newspaper utterances of our time. Irv’s curious questions had suggested to him a little essay upon the value of Publicity, and it was upon that theme that he wrote. He showed, with what Irv and Phil regarded as an extraordinary insight into things that they had supposed to be known only to themselves, how their very irregular reading of the newspapers, from time to time, as they received them, had first awakened their interest in a vague and general way in the bank burglary case; how, as their interest became intenser, and the descriptions of the fleeing criminal became more and more detailed, they had at last so far coupled one thing with another as to reach a correct conclusion at the critical moment. He showed how, but for this persistent and minute Publicity, they would never have dreamed of arresting the fugitive who was posing as their pilot--how, but for this, the criminals would probably never have been caught at all; how their escape would have operated as an encouragement to crime everywhere by relieving it of the fear of detection,--and much else to the like effect. It was a very interesting article, and it was one which set the boys thinking. “After all,” said Ed, “we owe a great deal more to the newspapers than I had ever thought. And the more we think of it, the more we see that we owe it to them. I don’t know whether they are always sincere in their antagonism to wrong or not, but at any rate in their rivalry with each other to get the earliest news and to stand best with the public, they manage pretty generally to expose about all the wrongs there are, and to rouse public opinion against them. I suppose that, but for the newspapers, we should not have a very good country to live in, especially so far as big cities are concerned.” “As to those sentiments,” said Irv, “I’m afraid one Thomas Jefferson got ahead of you, Ed. I remember reading that he said somewhere, that he would rather have a free press without a free government than a free government without a free press. I imagine his meaning to have been that we could not long have a free government without a free press, and that if we have a free press it must pretty soon compel the setting up of a free government.” “But the newspapers do publish such dreadful things,” said Constant. “They make so many sensations that their moral influence, I suppose, is pretty bad.”