It was for these moments and their concomitant changes of countenance
that you paid your money. To taste the triumph of good marksmanship was
only a fraction of your joy; the greater part of it consisted in
liberating a little prisoner and setting in motion so much ecstasy.
THE PRESS
America is a land of newspapers, and the newspapers are very largely the
same. To a certain extent many of them are exactly the same, for the
vastness of the country makes it possible to syndicalise various
features, so that you find Walt Mason's sagacious and merry and punctual
verse, printed to look like prose but never disappointing the ear, in
one of the journals that you buy wherever you are, in San Francisco,
Salt Lake City, Chicago or New York; and Mr. Montagu's topical rhymes in
another; and the daily adventures of Mutt and Jeff, who are national
heroes, in a third. Every day, for ever, do those and other regular
features occur in certain of the papers: which is partly why no American
ever seems to confine himself, as is our custom, to only one.
Another and admirable feature of certain American papers is a column
edited by a man of letters, whose business it is to fill it every day,
either with the blossoms of his own intelligence or of outside
contributors, or a little of each: such a column as Don Marquis edits
for _The Sun_, called "The Sundial," and Franklin R.
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