Testament, and print Wilson's last speech. The same journal which
contained this pregnant news, was chiefly filled, in parallel
columns, with the reports of the political conventions that were
being held. But the descent to them was too steep. They should
have been spared this contrast,--been printed in an extra, at least.
To turn from the voices and deeds of earnest men to the cackling
of political conventions! Office-seekers and speech-makers, who
do not so much as lay an honest egg, but wear their breasts bare
upon an egg of chalk! Their great game is the game of straws,
or rather that universal aboriginal game of the platter, at which
the Indians cried hub, bub! Exclude the reports of religious and
political conventions, and publish the words of a living man.

But I object not so much to what they have omitted, as to what they
have inserted. Even the Liberator called it "a misguided, wild,
and apparently insane--effort." As for the herd of newspapers and
magazines, I do not chance to know an editor in the country who
will deliberately print anything which he knows will ultimately
and permanently reduce the number of his subscribers. They do not
believe that it would be expedient. How then can they print truth?
If we do not say pleasant things, they argue, nobody will attend
to us. And so they do like some travelling auctioneers, who sing
an obscene song, in order to draw a crowd around them. Republican
editors, obliged to get their sentences ready for the morning
edition, and accustomed to look at everything by the twilight of
politics, express no admiration, nor true sorrow even, but call these
men "deluded fanatics,"--"mistaken men,"--"insane," or "crazed."
It suggests what a sane set of editors we are blessed with, not
"mistaken men"; who know very well on which side their bread is
buttered, at least.