Part 5 (2/2)
I looked around for a chair, and sat down ”struck all of a heap,” as the rural vernacular has it.
”Is that your definition of news?” I ventured at last.
”I'm not a dictionary. That's the definition of what I've been reading this afternoon.”
”Miss Warren, you may score one against me.”
The mischievous light was in her eyes, but she said suavely:
”Oh, no, you shall have another chance. I shall begin by showing mercy, for I may need it, and I see that you can be severe.”
”Well, please, let me take breath and rally my shattered wits before I make another advance. I understand you, then, that you regard newspapers as good Sunday reading?”
”You prove your ability, Mr. Morton, by drawing a vast conclusion from a small and ill-defined premise. I don't recall making any such statement.”
”Pardon me, you are at disadvantage now. I ask for no better premise than your own action; for you are one, I think, who would do only what you thought right.”
”A palpable hit. I'm glad I showed you mercy. Still it does not follow that because I read a newspaper, all newspapers are good Sunday reading. Indeed, there is much in this paper that is not good reading for Monday or any other day.”
”Ah!” I exclaimed, looking grave, ”then why do you read it?”
”I have not. A newspaper is like the world of which it is a brief record--full of good and evil. In either case, if one does not like the evil, it can be left alone.”
”Which do you think predominates in that paper?”
”Oh, the good, in the main. There is an abundance of evil, too, but it is rather in the frank and undisguised record of the evil in the world.
It does not seem to have got into the paper's blood and poisoned its whole life. It is easily skipped if one is so inclined. There are some journals in which the evil cannot be skipped. From the leading editorial to the obscurest advertis.e.m.e.nt, one stumbles on it everywhere. They are like certain regions in the South, in which there is no escape from the snakes and malaria. Now there are low places in this paper, but there is high ground also, where the air is good and wholesome, and where the outlook on the world is wide. That is the reason I take it.”
”I was not aware that many young ladies looked, in journals of this character, beyond the record of deaths and marriages.”
”We studied ancient history. Is it odd that we should have a faint desire to know what Americans are doing, as well as what the Babylonians did?”
”Oh, I do not decry your course as irrational. It seems rather--rather--”
”Rather too rational for a young lady.”
”I did not say that; but here is my excuse,” and I took from a table near a periodical ent.i.tled ”The Young Lady's Own Weekly,” addressed to Miss Adah Yocomb.
”Have not young men their own weeklies also--which of the two cla.s.ses is the more weakly?”
”Ahem! I decline to pursue this phase of the subject any further. To return to our premise, this journal,” and I laid my hand on the old paper caressingly. ”It so happens that I read it also, and thus learn that we have had many thoughts in common; though, no doubt, we would differ on some of the questions discussed in it. What do you think of its politics?”
”I think they are often very bad.”
”That's delightfully frank,” I said, sitting back in my chair a little stiffly. ”I think they are very good--at any rate they are mine.”
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