Feuilleton

“ The daily short story, a chapter of a serial novel, feature articles, humor in verse and prose, and similar forms of entertaining reading matter are a recognized part of every issue of many newspapers in all parts of the country.
The perfecting of photo-engraving processes, by which half-tone illustrations and zinc etchings can be made rapidly at relatively small cost, has added another important feature to the newspaper. Photographs of persons, places, and events that appear in the day’s news are now quickly reproduced by the newspaper half-tone. ”

“ Of all the serial publications of the day, it probably is the most serious, the most earnest, the least devoted to amusement, the least flippant, the least jocose,—and yet it has the face to show itself month after month to the world, with so absurd a misnomer! It is, as all who know the laws of modern literature are aware, a very serious thing to change the name of a periodical. ”

“ It is the biography of a Day. It is a photograph, of twenty-four hours' length, of the mysterious river of time that is sweeping past us forever. And yet we take our year's newspapers, which contain more tales of sorrow and suffering, and joy and success, and ambition and defeat, and villainy and virtue, than the greatest book ever written, and we give them to the girl to light the fire. It is a strange fact that nobody prizes a newspaper for its abstract value until it is about a century out of date. It would seem that newspapers are like wine; the older they are, the more valuable. ”

“ In dull seasons they are too large; in times of brisk advertising, and in the sudden access of important news, they are too small. To enlarge them for the occasion, resort is had to a troublesome fly-sheet, or, if they are doubled, there is more space to be filled than is needed. It seems to me that the inevitable remedy is a newspaper of small pages or forms, indefinite in number, that can at any hour be increased or diminished according to necessity, to be folded, stitched, and cut by machinery. ”

“ I found myself in daily and hourly receipt of sere and yellow fragments, originally torn from some dead and gone newspaper, creased and seamed from long folding in wallet or pocket-book. Need I say that most of them were of an emotional or didactic nature; need I add any criticism of these homely souvenirs, often discoloured by the morning coffee, the evening tobacco, or, Heaven knows! perhaps blotted by too easy tears! Enough that I knew now what had become of those original but never re-copied verses which filled the 'Poet's Corner' of every country newspaper on the coast. ”

“ The material of the sheet attracts our scorn. It is a fair specimen of rebel manufacture, thick and coarse, like wrapping-paper, all overspread with little knobs; and of such a deep, dingy blue color, that we wipe our spectacles thrice before we can distinguish a letter of the wretched print. Thus, in all points, the newspaper is a type of the times, far more fit for the rough hands of a democratic mob, than for our own delicate, though bony fingers. ”

“ Of course, that which has given persistent idiosyncrasy to a newspaper like the Sun, for example, is accumulated tradition. That which has made the whole count for more than the sum total of its parts, in the Sun’s case as in the case of its esteemed contemporaries, is the heritage of method and expedient, the increment of standardised skill and localised imagination contributed through many years to the fund of the paper by the forgotten worker as well as by the remembered. ”

“ In all the temperate climates of the globe, the four seasons are so many progressive stages in this circuit, which, like the acts in a well-constructed drama, gradually disclose, ripen, and bring to an end the various business transacted on the great theatre of nature. The striking analogy which this period with its several divisions bears to the course of human existence, has been remarked and pursued by writers of all ages and countries. ”

“ It is only good art that the cover of the novel and the covers of the characters shall be in harmony. He knows, also, that the characters in the winter novel must be adequately protected. We speak, of course, of the season stories. Novels that are to run through a year, or maybe many years, and are to set forth the passions and trials of changing age and varying circumstance, require different treatment and wider millinery knowledge. ”

“ The librarian who desires to make the management of his library in the highest degree successful, must give special attention to the important field of periodical literature. More and more, as the years roll on, the periodical becomes the successful rival of the book in the claim for public attention. Indeed, we hear now and then, denunciations of the ever-swelling flood of magazines and newspapers, as tending to drive out the book. Readers, we are told, are seduced from solid and improving reading, by the mass of daily, weekly, and monthly periodicals which lie in wait for them on every hand. ”

“ The historian will also be aided by the various treatises on the ballet, and on the circus, and on the puppet-show, with all of which forms of entertainment the variety-show has always had intimate relations.
It may be that the future historian will be moved to point out the superficial likeness between the variety-show and the Sunday issues of certain American newspapers. These Sunday newspapers are really magazines—that is to say, they occupy a position midway between journalism and literature, just as the variety-show occupies a position midway between the circus and the theater. ”

“ When you open your newspaper in the morning, the actual sensations of seeing the print form a very minute part of what goes on in you, but they are the starting-point of all the rest, and it is through them that the newspaper is a means of information or mis-information. ”

“ The mirror of the newspaper reflects in its pages every relationship of life, from the cradle to the grave. No other literature is so rapidly produced, so omnipresent its circulation, or is so potent in its possibilities for good or evil; for comparatively few men read books, but everyone eagerly peruses his newspaper. ”

“ To relieve the monotony of the long winter’s night, plays were acted every fortnight, a school established, and a newspaper set on foot—certainly the first periodical ever issued in so high a latitude. ”

“ The voices of creation return to us at periodical seasons. The early spring bird startles us with her unexpected note; the winter is over and gone. But no periodical change brings back the voices of departed friends. ”

“ They play a different opera every night at Covent Garden.
JOHN. I know they do. I wonder what they did [Pg 17] play? Where’s the newspaper? (Looking round for paper—seeing paper on table R. below door—crosses over—gets paper.) Here it is. (Crosses to TULLY.) Now if my luck’s in they played “Faust” (both look at paper together) last night—here we are—theatres—last night—Covent Garden—Pictures!! (JOHN tears the paper in two—gives half to TULLY.) Here, tear that up (handing other half) and this bit too—get rid of it somehow.
(TULLY tears paper in pieces and puts bits in handkerchief pocket.) ”

“ We commenced our issue last year avowedly as an evening journal; we claim now the distinction of having changed the fashion of evening newspapers. When this journal appeared, the morning journals had, it may be said, the day to themselves. No evening paper had more than an insignificant circulation. In these days it has long been little less than absurd that the people of this great country should have no new medium of information as to the news of the world from the midnight hour when what are called morning papers are made up. ”

“ The interest created by a newspaper is hardly confined to a perusal of its pages. After we have devoured the motley contents of its voluminous columns, and drunk in the excitement of its serried lines of print, there comes a pause—and in that pause we naturally turn to the marvellous phenomenon of its production. ”

“ The snow-storm in the far West has made it cold, but the air is sweet with the fragrance of early spring. The events of each day is the newspaper, and how dull the papers seem after the excitement of the past year. ”

“ I am now preparing for the press 'The Book of the Seasons,' a volume of prose and poetry, intended to furnish the lover of nature with a remembrancer, to put him in mind, on the opening of each month, of what he may look for in his garden, or his country walks; a notice of all remarkable in the round of the seasons, and the beautiful in scenery,—of all that is pleasant in rural sights, sounds, customs, and occupations. ”

“ Fields built a few sentences for her “Biographical Notes,” I find:—
July 26, 1863.—What a strange history this literary life in America at the present day would make. An editor and publisher at once, and at this date, stands at a confluence of tides where all humanity seems to surge up in little waves; some larger than the rest (every seventh it may be) dashes up in music to which the others love to listen; or some springing to a great height retire to tell the story of their flight to those who stay below.
Mr. Longfellow is quietly at Nahant. ”

“ The artist had an idea.
“Write a fine article for the Gazette,” he said: “you know how to write well. Tell the wonderful things which the little clown does, and I will draw his portrait for you. Everybody reads the Gazette, and people will flock to see the circus.” ”

“ Are only maidens waltzing into wives;’
about the theatre, where
‘Toole or Compton, perfect in his part,
Touches each sense, except the head and heart;’
and about a number of other things too censurable to be mentioned here.
And, in truth, when one thinks of the Season in song, one thinks less of the satire [Pg 125] than of the sarcasm, less of the cynicism than of the sympathy, with which it has been treated by its poets. Take, for example, that most conspicuous feature of the Season—the walking, riding, driving in the Row. ”

“ I said, trying to remember my talk with Fleetwood at The Holly Tree. At this Duggie lay back and shrieked aloud.
"That man will be found some day torn into small, neat shreds," he managed to say at last.
"Why?" I asked—for I knew he liked Fleetwood.
"Why, because I'm the lion," Duggie giggled.
VII
It must be several weeks since I 've written a word in my diary. To tell the truth, I spend so much time writing other things—things that are printed and sold—actually—at the bookstores—that somehow my own every-day affairs don't seem so important as they did. ”

“ I read your column religiously and it runs so smoothly and spontaneously that it doesn't seem possible it can take you more than an hour to write it."
"An hour! Little you know. And subjects don't drop out of the clouds, dear Anne. I have to go through all the newspapers, read an endless number of books—not all fiction by a long sight—glance through the magazines, reviews, weekly publications and foreign newspapers, read my rivals' columns, go about among the Sophisticates, attend first-nights, prize-fights, and even see the best of the movies. I assure you it's a dog's life." ”

“ If, after an evening spent in looking over the old magazines which form the subject of the next few chapters, you can turn to the current weeklies and monthlies, and feel absolutely certain that we are better than our fathers, it augurs either a very wisely selected purchase from the crowded bookstall, which, at each railway station as the first of the month approaches, has its hundreds of rival magazines, or else that it would be wiser to spend still more time over the old periodicals until a certain 'divine dissatisfaction' was aroused towards the average illustrated periodical of to-day. ”

“ I presume that, during this period, the diary was still going on; and no one with such a gift for writing will stop short at a diary. In fact, Raymond tried his hand at a few short stories—still another muse was fluttering about his temples. ”

“ For periodicals—newspapers, magazines, reviews—are the Fools' Paradise of the commonplace, the mediocre, the orthodox, the respectable. As the strength of a chain must be measured by its weakest link, so the thought of a periodical must be measured by the thought of its most imbecile subscribers. ”

“ Modern drama arose, by a fairly well defined line of evolution, from a threefold source, the ecclesiastical liturgy, the farce of the mimes, the classical revivals of humanism. Folk-drama contributed but the tiniest rill to the mighty stream. Such as [Pg 183] it was, however, a couple of further chapters may be not unprofitably spent in its analysis.
The festival customs include a number of dramatic rites which appear to have been originally symbolical expressions of the facts of seasonal recurrence lying at the root of the festivals themselves. ”

“ It becomes a follow-up story, for it follows up the subsequent developments in the previous story and corresponds to the second [131] or succeeding installments of a serial novel in which each installment begins with a synopsis of previous chapters. For example, if, in the grain elevator fire story, the body of a watchman were found in the ruins after the morning papers have gone to press, the story would immediately have a different news value for the evening papers. The story of the big fire is old, but the discovery of the body is new. ”

“ Stage drama takes even a step in advance of fiction literature in its approximation of realistic illusion. The characters of the play become the breathing, living, walking and talking persons conceived by the playwright and anticipated by the audience. Audiences laugh and weep, rejoice and sigh, despite themselves, wherever good stage drama is offered. ”