we shall never lack the company of Greatheart.



TO A YOUNG JOURNALIST



Dear Smith, -

You inform me that you desire to be a journalist, and you are kind
enough to ask my advice. Well, be a journalist, by all means, in
any honest and honourable branch of the profession. But do not be
an eavesdropper and a spy. You may fly into a passion when you
receive this very plainly worded advice. I hope you will; but, for
several reasons, which I now go on to state, I fear that you won't.
I fear that, either by natural gift or by acquired habit, you
already possess the imperturbable temper which will be so useful to
you if you do join the army of spies and eavesdroppers. If I am
right, you have made up your mind to refuse to take offence, as long
as by not taking offence you can wriggle yourself forward in the
band of journalistic reptiles. You will be revenged on me, in that
case, some day; you will lie in wait for me with a dirty bludgeon,
and steal on me out of a sewer. If you do, permit me to assure you
that I don't care. But if you are already in a rage, if you are
about tearing up this epistle, and are starting to assault me
personally, or at least to answer me furiously, then there is every
hope for you and for your future. I therefore venture to state my
reasons for supposing that you are inclined to begin a course which
your father, if he were alive, would deplore, as all honourable men