The Free lance., May 01, 1891, Image 8

legiate Athletic Association held in New York,
when it was proposed by one of the colleges to abol•
ish it from the list of so-called standard athletics.
The contest is exciting, there is no doubt. That
it requires skill, there is no doubt. However,
when we consider the tremendous strain which is
exerted on a man's nerves and muscle, when he
has to exert for the space of five or more minutes
all the nervous and muscular force in his system,
we cannot think that as an exercise it is beneficial.
And if not beneficial, why include it in our list
of athletic contests here at P. S. C?
It has in it none of the sport or dash of foot
ball or base-ball, none of the pleasant healthy ex
ercise of running, vaulting or jumping. Should
we include it in the list of inter-class contests?
The question is well worth considering.
4:
4: :1
THE Business Manager requests that subscrib
ers when changing their place of residence
would kindly drop him a note giving
their old and new addresses in order that confus
ion in mailing may be avoided.
*
4: 4
THE Editor feels that he owes an apology to a
few of those persons, who kindly contri
buted to the April number, for the many
typographical errors which some of their articles
contained. The proof reading, the paper being
published just at the opening of the term, was
hurried, and as a result, through the fault of the
Editor and not of the writers, there were several
sentences which were so badly confused as to
render their exact meaning doubtful.
THE FIELD OF JOURNALISM.
The enormous growth of the newspaper in this
day has opened a field of labor almost entirely un
known a half century ago. The additional facili
ties afforded by the extension of postal and tele
graph service for gathering news, steam presses
for printing and railways for distributing, have
THE FREE LANCE.
kept the newspaper up to the standard demanded
by the spread of knowledge among all classes, and
ihe bringing of the world within the reach of a
single day and the comprehension of the meanest
intellect. The small sheets of the primitive pa
per, depending upon chance couriers for home
news and sailing vessels for foreign intelligence,
are now interesting relics showing the respective
stages of newspaper evolution. Any man could
be an editor, his duties being to attend to the
business department, edit the communications
from patrons which largely filled his columns, and
between times to collect such items of news as
came to his eyes through the occasional exchanges,
or to his ears from street or wharf gossip. The
literary genius could find play only in the essay
touching upon local follies or foibles, as in the
Spectator or Salmagundi, but these must not be
personal. Now the daily paper is a compound of
gossip, sports, scandal, politics, stocks, real es
tate, market, public improvement, literature and
miscellany, with a Sunday edition as large as a
magazine, containing all these departments and
additional "write ups" on fashion, occupations'
health, oddities and a letter from the inevitable
"funny man." Scarcely any topic can fail to
find a place in the columns of a newspaper, and
no one who feels, as Dr. Holmes describes it, that
he must write need despair of finding a hearing—
provided there are not too many other "must"
fellows in ahead of him.
Of course all this opening to genius and the
desire of seeing one's name "in print" has ripen
ed a great crop of writers, some few cultivated but
the mass, as they say of some potatoes out West
"volunteers." The statements are astounding.
Mary Mapes Dodge, editor of St. Nicholas, says
that she rejects enough manuscript during a year
to fill another magazine the size of her publica
tion. The editors of the New York Ledger have
found it necessary to place over the entrance to
their literary coverts, the sign: "No unsolicited
manuscripts are wanted," while Mr. Edward
Bok, the bright young editor of the Ladies' Home