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is more than the city would sell for if some syndicate should enter the business of buying up municipalities. He finds his relations with the state government unsatisfactory in every respect. Owing to the difference of political complexion between them, them, the state turning Democratic about as often as the city turns Republican,-nearly everything Boston asks for is refused by the legislature and many burdens she does not desire are thrust forcibly upon her. The state legislators have taken away from the capital the control of its own police and the right of constructing its own voting list. They are tinkering now with a new method of electing aldermen and a new system of distributing liquor licenses. Financially, Boston has suffered grievously at the hands of the dominant. party in the State. She pays the lion's share of the cost of the parks and boulevards that scarcely graze her territory, and an enormous proportion of the cost of the metropolitan water service. The expense of the court house falls upon her, although it is used freely by lawyers in other counties; her normal school receives no assistance from the state; taxes paid by her corporations are handed over to Brookline and Manchester. In a word, the State sets up a high standard of self-sacrifice for the meek metropolis, whose patience under legislative blows entitles it to the designation of the Most Christian Capital.

As I have intimated, the commercial situation in both the city and the state is a subject which no modern mayor, alive to his full responsibilities, can ignore. Boston is the second port in the nation, but it is losing its export trade. One of the

first acts of my administration was to engage an expert to analyse this problem and to set forth the evidences and causes of our retarded growth and such remedies as he could suggest. His report is before me now, a clear discussion of al! the influences, such as differentials, duties, railroad discrimination, high taxation, overstrict corporation laws, lack of technical education,-which have affected the commercial progress of Boston and Massachusetts. Both natural and artificial causes enter in and each adverse factor must be met by remedies or preven tatives adapted to the case. Sometimes it is Congress that must be turned over to a new way of thinking; sometimes it is the state legislature that needs to see the light; sometimes it is a railroad or government commission which must be reminded that it cannot sacrifice the interests of a great capital; sometimes the pressure must be brought to bear on some of our citizens, reluctant to pay their due share of the cost of public improvements by which they profit. All these things may help or hurt the welfare of the city, and the modern mayor, like the Roman magistrates, is expected to see "that the republic shall suffer no harm." Paraphrasing the Latin poet, I may adopt his phrase as my official motto, "Nihil Bostoniae a me alienum puto:" nothing that concerns Boston is outside my province. I want to see the city grow, because things that do not grow stagnate. In order that it may grow, I want its citizens and especially its commercial bodies (too often working at odds or without concentrated purpose) to come together and join Boshands in the common cause. ton needs their loyalty in the pres

ent crisis; she deserves their devotion. One function of the modern mayor is to stand as a symbol of the city itself, to touch the imagination of the people and call into play their local patriotism. That implies that his sympathies must radiate in all directions in order that he may bring together even the extremists of every class, religion, and race. To accomplish this result,-to know my fellow citizens and introduce them to one another, has been the under

lying purpose of my own activities in the office which I hold. I could have sat at my desk, countersigning bonds and stamping documents, and reserved my evenings for my family. I could have confined myself to strictly municipal business and let the doctors take care of the consumptives' hospital and the schoolmasters organize commercial and technical schools. But I do not interpret in that negative fashion the functions of a modern mayor.

Old Lace (1776)

By EUNICE Parke Detweiler

Let me feel it, child!

Methinks that I can trace

Love's message, in this web of filmy lace.
The clinging meshes give a fond caress,
My feeble hand and trembling fingers press.
Ah! sweet the memories of the Long Ago,
That fill my heart with sunset's golden glow!
Radiant the light,-and in it now I see
Loved forms and faces, once so dear to me;
They throng around me,-she who wore this lace
Upon her wedding morn, with youthful grace
She stood beside the one she loved, that day.
At night War's trumpet summoned him away,-
He fell in battle! How her sweet, sad face
Comes up before me as I touch this lace!
These fragile threads, so yellow now with age,
Tell many a story I read page by page,
And Memory opens wide her golden door
For me to enter,-blind am I no more!

My palsied hands stretch out in Love's warm rays
To greet and clasp the loved of other days!

"The night has gone: those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile!"

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IT.

NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE.

London's First "Yellow
Journalist"

T is difficult to realize that the present abundance of "news" as exhibited by the daily press, is the growth of less than a century. This is brought to mind by the perusal of an odd volume "The Catnach Press," of which only 250 copies were printed. It was intended as a memorial to James Catnach, who, during the first quarter of the last century was the original and for years the only purveyor of "news" to the poorer classes in London, and contains, besides a sketch of his career, abundant samples of the wares with which he supplied his public. The character of this material is an illustration of the literary "taste" to which he catered, and in some respects it sug

gests that he was a master in what some people imagine is a more modern art the imposition of sensational invention for genuine information regarding current events.

He appears to have been the pioneer of "yellow journalism," and aside from the elaboration possible under modern conditions, some of his work would "give points" to the latest sensation monger.

"Old Jeremy" Catnach was a printer and his "press" was established in 1813. Many years afterward it was broken up, and some admirer who appreciated his work, and the humor which infused his record for ingenuity and enterprise in exciting the interest of his "public" compiled a volume, which includes the story of his work, samples of the literature with which he fed his readers, and a generous selection from his "works." This was printed from the material in his office, and furnishes not only an interesting epitome of the literature of the lower classes, but is also illustrative of the typographic art of his time.

His office was in Monmouth Court, in a region famous in London history as "The Seven Dials," "the region of song and poetryfirst effusions and dying speeches." His biographer says of him:

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"It was he who first availed himself of

greater mechanical skill and a larger capital than had been previously employed in that department of THE TRADE, to substitute for the execrable tea-paper, blotched with lamp-black and oil, which characterized the old broa 1-side and ballad printing, tolerable white paper and real printer's ink. But more than that, it was he who first conceived and carried into effect, the idea of publishing collections of songs by the yard, and giving to purchasers, for the small price of one penny, (in former days the cost of a single ballad) a string of poetry resembling in shape and length the

list of Don Juan's mistresses, which Leporello unrolls on the stage before Donna Anna. He was an ordinary man, Catnach; he patronized original talents in many a bard of St. Giles's, and is understood to have accumulated the largest store of broadsides, last-dying speeches, ballads, and other stock-in-trade of the flying stationer's upon record. He was by far the best-known, and the most successful printer and publisher of all who have directed their industry to supply the 'paper in demand for street sale, and in every department of street literature.'

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Murders, trials and executions, scandals in high life, etc., were his capital, and he demonstrated its earning power with ingenuity and enterprise. The "trial of Queen Catherine" was a god-send to him, and by it he amassed a large sum which made possible the later development of his business. A little later he had almost equal success with the "full, true and particular account of the murder of Weare by Thurtell and his companions, in Gill's Hill Lane, near Elstree, in Hertfordshire, in 1824." He had no notion of stereotyping, and set four forms from which 200 to 300 copies an hour were pulled off on a hand press. By working night and day. for a week he got off about 250,000 copies with four presses. His profit was over £500. The newspapers of his day were not available for the working classes to whom he catered, as they were sold at seven and eight pence a copy and were read only by the well-to-do higher classes. The demand for this issue was so great that the "new cadgers" or "patterers" besieged his shop so that he was obliged to issue checks representing purchases which were redeemed with the printed sheets in another locality. The trial of Thurtell and his companions brought him still greater success and by the aid of other printers he issued nearly

half a million copies in eight days. Unfortunately his assistants robbed him of the fruit of this venture by selling the sheets on their own accounts, and besides they got an idea of the profit of the business, and started a competition that was very annoying.

That Catnach was quite in touch with the possibilities of the situation, and a genuine pioneer in “yellow journalism," is shown by the fact that after Weare's murderers were executed and he had made good money by the sale of his story of the event, he brought out a startling broad-side with the glaring caption "WE ARE alive again!" and put so little space between the words "we" and "are" that the casual observer was deluded with the idea that Weare had been brought to life, and purchased accordingly. Those sedate people who did not approve of such enterprise in business called the trick a "catchpenny" which is said to have been the origin of the phrase, and it ever afterward attached to the issues of the "Seven Dials Press," but their sale was not thereby hindered.

Like Mr. Wegg, Catnach could "drop into poetry" on occasion, and he realized on his talent from time to time. On the execution of Thurtell and his companions he published a string of verses in this style.

"Come all good Christians, praise the Lord, And trust to him in hope; God in his mercy John Thurtell sent

To hang from Hertford gallows rope. "Poor Weare's murder the Lord disclosed, Be glory to his name:

And Thurtell, Hunt and Probert too
Were brought to grief and shame."

"Old Jeremy" had no welcome for new ideas, and he would not buy new type, even after his "fonts"

were badly demoralized. When a "case" was out of "sorts" he would have the boys use anything that came handy. He thought the figure I a good substitute for a lower case "1" and a cap "O" and a cipher were synonymous. So a lower case p, d, b, and q would do duty for each other by inversion, and if Roman letters gave out italic was always at hand. His receipts were almost entirely in pennies, and these he transported to the Bank of England in sacks in a hackney-coach. His neighbors were fearful of contagion if they accepted his coin until he hit upon the expedient of boiling in a solution of copperas and vinegar, making them look as bright as when newly coined. He paid his workmen in pennies, and a week's wages required the assistance of wives and children to take them home, their weight being largely in excess of the present coinage. He had trouble, too with counterfeits, and these accumulated so that he paved a back-kitchen floor with them, imbedded in cement.

Illustrations were not easily procured in Catnach's day, and he became his own designer and woodengraver. Quite a collection of his wood-cuts is given in the "memorial volume." As compared with modern processes of illustration it is not easy to decide whether his poetry or his pictures were the more crude and exasperating. His use of cuts was on a par with his use of type, and one picture served often to illustrate quite dissimilar stories. He soon learned, besides, that certain crimes and tragedies were likely to occur from time to time and he prepared for them by a combination of his imagination and his graver's tools, just as nowadays we are

treated to a graphic picture of shipwreck, by newspaper artists who never saw either the ship nor the locality of the wreck.

When there was a dearth of genuine or "faked" sensations he kept his presses and his "patterers" busy by issuing ballads, like "Poor Bessy was a Sailor's Bride," "Jack Junk of Wapping Old Stairs," "John Anderson my Joe," "Fair Phoebe and her Dark-eyed Sailor," "My "My Pretty Jane," "The Bleeding Heart," etc., all "illustrated." Christmas carols were also in order, with what now seem to be horrible caricatures of sacred subjects. Gothic churches and people in modern costume were not incongruous to his patrons with New Testament stories.

Catnach retired from business in 1839, after more than a quarter of a century of industrious and succesful effort, and he died soon afterward leaving a considerable estate. He was so in love with the stock phrases out of which he had coined money, or else he had a grim sense of humor, for he headed his last will and testament with "The Last Dying Speech of James Catnach, etc." His biographer has this to say of his work:

"It is gratifying to be able to record that what the late Mr. Catnach was to the masses in the way of news provider some forty years ago, the penny papers are now, with this exception, that the former tended to lower and degrade their pursuit after knowledge, while the latter on the contrary improve and elevate them, while they amuse and instruct each one who peruses their contents. With the march of intellect, and the thirst for knowledge blended with the desire for truth, out went to a great extent the penny broad-sheet. Several persons made the attempt to revive it long after the death of the great original Jeremy Catnach, but without success."

The morbid mentality of the pub

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