"How would you mend it?" said Barthrop. "It seems to me it must represent
_something_."

"Something!" said Father Payne. "I don't know! I don't believe we are so
stupid and so ignoble! As to mending it, that's another question. Writing
is such a curious thing--it seems to represent anything in the world except
the current of a man's thoughts. Reverie--has anyone ever tried to
represent that? I have been out for a walk sometimes, and reflected when I
came in that if what has passed through my mind were all printed in full in
a book, it would make a large octavo volume--and precious stuff, too! Yet
the few thoughts which do stand out when it is all over, the few bright
flashes, they are things which can hardly be written down--at least they
never are written down."

"But what would you do?" I said--"with the newspapers, I mean."

"Well," said Father Payne, "a great deal of the news most worth telling can
be told best in pictures. I believe very much in illustrated papers. They
really do help the imagination. That's the worst of words--a dozen
scratches on a bit of paper do more to make one realise a scene than
columns of description. I would do a lot with pictures, and a bit of print
below to tell people what to notice. Then we must have a number of bare
facts and notices--weather, business, trade, law--the sort of thing that
people concerned must read. But I would make a clean sweep of fashion, and
all sensational intelligence--murders, accidents, sudden deaths. I would
have much more biography of living people as well as dead, and a few of the
big speeches. Then I would have really good articles with pictures about
foreign countries--we ought to know what the world looks like, and how the
other people live. And then I would have one or two really fine little