institution.  They know what a pestilence is, because they have one occasionally that thins the people out at the rate of two thousand a day, and they regard a newspaper as a mild form of pestilence.  When it goes astray, they suppress it—­pounce upon it without warning, and throttle it.  When it don’t go astray for a long time, they get suspicious and throttle it anyhow, because they think it is hatching deviltry.  Imagine the Grand Vizier in solemn council with the magnates of the realm, spelling his way through the hated newspaper, and finally delivering his profound decision:  “This thing means mischief —­it is too darkly, too suspiciously inoffensive—­suppress it!  Warn the publisher that we can not have this sort of thing:  put the editor in prison!”

The newspaper business has its inconveniences in Constantinople.  Two Greek papers and one French one were suppressed here within a few days of each other.  No victories of the Cretans are allowed to be printed.  From time to time the Grand Vizier sends a notice to the various editors that the Cretan insurrection is entirely suppressed, and although that editor knows better, he still has to print the notice.  The Levant Herald is too fond of speaking praisefully of Americans to be popular with the Sultan, who does not relish our sympathy with the Cretans, and therefore that paper has to be particularly circumspect in order to keep out of trouble.  Once the editor, forgetting the official notice in his paper that the Cretans were crushed out, printed a letter of a very different tenor, from the American Consul in Crete, and was fined two hundred and fifty dollars for it.  Shortly he printed another from the same source and was imprisoned three months for his pains.  I think I could get the assistant editorship of the Levant Herald, but I am going to try to worry along without it.

To suppress a paper here involves the ruin of the publisher, almost.  But in Naples I think they speculate on misfortunes of that kind.  Papers are suppressed there every day, and spring up the next day under a new name.  During the ten days or a fortnight we staid there one paper was murdered and resurrected twice.  The newsboys are smart there, just as they are elsewhere.  They take advantage of popular weaknesses.  When they find they are not likely to sell out, they approach a citizen mysteriously, and say in a low voice—­“Last copy, sir:  double price; paper just been suppressed!” The man buys it, of course, and finds nothing in it.  They do say—­I do not vouch for it—­but they do say that men sometimes print a vast edition of a paper, with a ferociously seditious article in it, distribute it quickly among the newsboys, and clear out till the Government’s indignation cools.  It pays well.  Confiscation don’t amount to any thing.  The type and presses are not worth taking care of.

There is only one English newspaper in Naples.  It has seventy subscribers.  The publisher is getting rich very deliberately—­very deliberately indeed.