The old-clothes business has never been considered respectable.  It is supposed to begin and to end with cheating; it deals with very dirty things.  It would be hard to mention a calling of lower repute.  From the men who come to your door with trays of abominable china vases on their heads, and are ready to take any sort of rags in payment for them, down—­or up?—­to the bigger wretches who advertise that “ladies and gentlemen can obtain the highest price for their cast-off clothing by calling at No. so and so, on such a street,” they are all alike odious and despicable.

We wonder when we find anybody who is not an abject Jew, engaged in the business.  We think we can recognize the stamp of the disgusting traffic on their very faces.  It is by no means uncommon to hear it said of a sorry sneak, “He looks like an old-clothes dealer.”

But what shall we say of the old-clothes mongers in journalism?  By the very name we have defined, described them, and pointed them out.  If only we could make the name such a badge of disgrace that every member of the fraternity should forthwith betake him or herself to some sort of honest labor!

These are they who crowd the columns of our daily newspapers with the dreary, monotonous, worthless, scandalous tales of what other men and women did, are doing, or will do, said, say, or will say, wore, wear, or will wear, thought, think, or will think, ate, eat, or will eat, drank, drink, or will drink:  and if there be any other verb coming under the head of “to do, to be, to suffer,” add that to the list, and the old-clothes monger will furnish you with something to fill out the phrase.

These are they who patch out their miserable, little, sham “properties” for mock representations of life, by scraps from private letters, bits of conversation overheard on piazzas, in parlors, in bedrooms, by odds and ends of untrustworthy statements picked up at railway-stations, church-doors, and offices of all sorts, by impudent inferences and suppositions, and guesses about other people’s affairs, by garblings and partial quotings, and, if need be, by wholesale lyings.

The trade is on the increase,—­rapidly, fearfully on the increase.  Every large city, every summer watering-place, is more or less infested with this class of dealers.  The goods they have to furnish are more and more in demand.  There is hardly a journal in the country but has column after column full of their tattered wares; there is hardly a man or woman in the country but buys them.

There is, perhaps, no remedy.  Human nature has not yet shed all the monkey.  A lingering and grovelling baseness in the average heart delights in this sort of cast-off clothes of fellow-worms.  But if the trade must continue, can we not insist that the profits be shared?  If A is to receive ten dollars for quoting B’s remarks at a private dinner yesterday, shall not B have a small percentage on the sale?  Clearly, this is only justice.  And in cases where the wares are simply stolen, shall there be no redress?  Here is an opening for a new Bureau.  How well its advertisements would read:—­