We next passed a cheerful active young man in an old but well-cut serge suit who went by in a great hurry. "That," said Perry, "is Albert White, the great newspaper proprietor. He has made himself a most extraordinary career." It seemed that Mr. Albert White was the son of a man of good family, but one possessing considerable wealth. At an early age, when other young men in his position were preparing for a life of dull idleness, he decided that he would raise himself to a high position amongst the workers. He started a weekly paper which few people could read, and lost a good deal of money over it. Using this as a stepping-stone, he started other papers, each more unreadable than the last. He developed a positive genius for discovering what the people didn't want, and in a very few years had lost more than any other newspaper proprietor had dropped in a lifetime. Now he was one of the poorest men in Upsidonia, and had made his family, and many others whom he had picked out to help him, poor too. "Others have since followed in his footsteps," said Perry, "but none have had the success that he has. His daily paper has by far the smallest circulation of any in Upsidonia. People refuse to read it in enormous numbers, and it is the worst advertising medium in journalism." "Why?" I asked. "What is its character?" "It is mostly written by very learned men. White does not mind how little he pays to get the right people. He makes a frank appeal to the literate, and, of course, there are fewer of them than of any class. The odd thing is that nobody ever seems to have realised before what a great field for newspaper enterprise there is amongst those who _will_ have the best and nothing but it. White has taught us that you can drop more money over it, and in a shorter time, than with almost anything else." "I suppose your learned men are amongst the poor?" I asked. "Yes. Aren't yours?" "We keep them fairly poor as a rule." "It is the only possible way. The mind is of much more importance than the body, and it cannot do fullest justice to itself if it is hampered by the distractions of wealth, or clogged by luxury. For that reason, I take it, in both countries, we keep our learned men poor, and strive after what knowledge we can." "I can't say that in my country we _all_ strive after it," I said. "We don't like to let our learned men feel that we are cutting them out." "Ah, I think that is a mistake; but perhaps it is not a bad one. If there is one thing that our upper classes lack, it is humility. I suppose, though, that all your people _do_ earnestly desire the best gifts in life--knowledge, high character, and so on!" "Most of us, of course. But there are some who seem to prefer to be merely well off." "Ah, I'm afraid that there will always be those; but I rather gather from things that you have let fall that you don't despise them quite as much as we do." "Possibly a shade less. We are charitable in that respect."