The novel, whether it be of classic form or of faddish type, makes a mark upon the mind of the public.  Fiction is a necessary element of modern education.  A man may be a successful physician or a noted lawyer without having read a novel; but he could not be regarded as a man of refined culture.  A novel is an intellectual luxury, and in the luxuries of a country we find the refinements of the nation.  It was not invention but fancy that made Greece great.  A novel-reading nation is a progressive nation.  At one time the most successful publication in this country was a weekly paper filled with graceless sensationalism, and it was not the pulpit nor the lecture-platform that took hold of the public taste and lifted it above this trash—­it was the publication in cheap form of the English classics.  And when the mind of the masses had been thus improved, the magazine became a success.

One slow but unmistakable drift of fiction is toward the short story, and the carefully edited newspaper may hold the fiction of the future.

WHITELAW REID

THE PRESS—­RIGHT OR WRONG

[Speech of Whitelaw Reid at the 108th annual banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, May 4, 1876.  Samuel D. Babcock, President of the Chamber, was in the chair, and proposed the following toast, to which Mr. Reid was called upon for a response:  “The Press—­right or wrong; when right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be set right.”]

MR. PRESIDENT:—­Lastly, Satan came also, the printer’s, if not the public’s devil, in propria persona! [Laughter.] The rest of you gentlemen have better provided for yourselves.  Even the Chamber of Commerce took the benefit of clergy.  The Presidential candidates and the representatives of the Administration and the leading statesmen who throng your hospitable board, all put forward as their counsel the Attorney-General [Alphonso Taft] of the United States.  And, as one of his old clients at my left said a moment ago, “a precious dear old counsel he was.” [Laughter.]

The Press is without clergymen or counsel; and you doubtless wish it were also without voice.  At this hour none of you have the least desire to hear anything or to say anything about the press.  There are a number of very able gentlemen who were ranged along that platform—­I utterly refuse to say whether I refer to Presidential candidates or not—­but there were a number of very able gentlemen who were ranged along that table, who are very much more anxious to know what the press to-morrow morning will have to say about them [laughter], and I know it because I saw the care with which they handed up to the reporters the manuscript copies of their entirely unprepared and extempore remarks. [Laughter.]