Our age is intensely commercial; it is not
the dry-goods man or the grain merchant only who has goods for sale,
but the poet, the orator, the scholar, the philosopher, and the
politician. We are all, in a measure, seeking a market for our
wares. What we desire, therefore, above all things, is a good
advertising medium, or, in other words, a good means of making known
to all the world where our store is and what we have to sell. This
means the editor of a daily paper can furnish to anybody he pleases.
He is consequently the object of unceasing adulation from a crowd of
those who shrink from fighting the slow and doubtful battle of life
in the open field, and crave the kindly shelter of editorial
plaudits, "puffs," and "mentions." He finds this adulation offered
freely, and by all classes and conditions, without the least
reference to his character or talents or antecedents. What wonder if
it turns the heads of unworthy men, and begets in them some of the
vices of despots--their unscrupulousness, their cruelty, and their
impudence.
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