ceasing to be a man and becoming merely an editor--no, not even an
editor--a newsmonger, one of the world's gossips. You are an Athenian
only as you wish to hear and tell some new thing. Long ears are
becoming the appropriate symbols of your being. You are too hurried,
too eager for temporary success, too taken up with details, to form
calm, philosophical opinions of the great events of your time, and
thus be able to shape men's opinions. You commenced as a reporter, and
are a reporter still. You pride yourself that you are not narrow,
unconscious of the truth that you are spreading yourself thinly over
the mere surface of affairs. You have little comprehension of the
deeper forces and motives of humanity."

It is true that I might have pleaded in extenuation of these rather
severe judgments that I was somewhat alone in the world, living in
bachelor apartments, without the redeeming influences of home and
family life. There were none whose love gave them the right or the
motive to lay a restraining hand upon me, and my associates in labor
were more inclined to applaud my zeal than to curb it. Thus it had
been left to the casual remark of a nameless printer and an instance
of my own failing powers to break the spell that ambition and habit
were weaving.

Before the half hour elapsed I felt weak and ill. The moment I relaxed
the tension and will-power which I had maintained so long, strong
reaction set in. Apparently I had about reached the limits of
endurance. I felt as if I were growing old and feeble by minutes as
one might by years. Taking my hat and coat I passed out, remarking to
my assistant that he must do the best he could--that I was ill and
would not return. If the Journal had never appeared again I could not
then have written a line to save it, or read another proof.