they already know, if it is about themselves or their neighbors, if it is
a report of something they have been concerned in, a lecture they have
heard, a fair, or festival, or wedding, or funeral, or barn-raising they
have attended. The result is column after column of short paragraphs of
gossip and trivialities, chips, chips, chips. Mr. Sales is contemplating
erecting a new counter in his store; his rival opposite has a new sign;
Miss Bumps of Gath is visiting her cousin, Miss Smith of Bozrah; the
sheriff has painted his fence; Farmer Brown has lost his cow; the eminent
member from Neopolis has put an ell on one end of his mansion, and a
mortgage on the other.

On the face of it nothing is so vapid and profitless as column after
column of this reading. These "items" have very little interest, except
to those who already know the facts; but those concerned like to see them
in print, and take the newspaper on that account. This sort of inanity
takes the place of reading-matter that might be of benefit, and its
effect must be to belittle and contract the mind. But this is not the
most serious objection to the publication of these worthless details. It
cultivates self-consciousness in the community, and love of notoriety; it
develops vanity and self-importance, and elevates the trivial in life
above the essential.

And this brings me to speak of the mania in this age, and especially in
America, for notoriety in social life as well as in politics. The
newspapers are the vehicle of it, sometimes the occasion, but not the
cause. The newspaper may have fostered--it has not created--this hunger
for publicity. Almost everybody talks about the violation of decency and
the sanctity of private life by the newspaper in the publication of
personalities and the gossip of society; and the very people who make
these strictures are often those who regard the paper as without