Although father says there is nothing in the paper there is a great deal of reading in it, that we can see.  And now comes the question, Who writes it all?  Who writes this thin, flat book of six or eight great pages which every morning we buy for a penny or a halfpenny?  But perhaps you think it does not matter who writes the newspapers, for the newspaper is not literature.  Literature means real books with covers—­dear possessions to be loved and taken care of, to be read and read again.  But a newspaper is hardly read at all when it is crumpled up and used to light the fire.  And no one minds, for who could love a newspaper, who cares to treasure it, and read it again and yet again?

We do not want even to read yesterday’s newspapers, for newspapers seem to hold for us only the interest of the day.  The very name by which they used to be called, journal, seems to tell us that, for it comes from the French word “jour,” meaning “a day.”  Newspapers give us the news of the day for the day.  Yet in them we find the history of our own times, and we are constantly kept in mind of how important they are in our everyday life by such phrases as “the freedom of the Press,” “the opinion of the Press,” the Press meaning all the newspapers, journals and magazines and the people who write for them.

So we come back again to our question, Who writes for the newspapers?  The answer is, the journalists.  A newspaper is not all the work of one man, but of many whose names we seldom know, but who work together so that each morning we may have our paper.  And in this chapter I want to tell you about one of our first real journalists, Daniel Defoe.  Of course you know of him already, for he wrote Robinson Crusoe, and he is perhaps your favorite author.  But before he was an author he was a journalist, and as I say one of our first.

For there was a time when there were no newspapers, nothing for father to read at breakfast-time, and no old newspapers to crumple up and light fires with.  The first real printed English newspaper was called the Weekly News.  It was published in 1622, while King Charles I was still upon the throne.

But this first paper and others that came after it were very small.  The whole paper was not so large as a page of one of our present halfpenny papers.  The news was told baldly without any remarks upon it, and when there was not enough news it was the fashion to fill up the space with chapters from the Bible.  Sometimes, too, a space was left blank on purpose, so that those who bought the paper in town might write in their own little bit of news before sending it off to country friends.

Defoe was one of the first to change this, to write articles and comments upon the news.  Gradually newspapers became plentiful.  And when Government by party became the settled form of our Government, each party had its own newspaper and used it to help on its own side and abuse the other.