OLD NEWSPAPERS.
For our part, though we read the newspapers every day, we get very little enjoyment out of them. We read them from a sense of duty, and we find them dull. It will be urged that there is nothing very extraordinary in this ; but as a matter of fact there is. The newspaper of Tuesday the 3rd, when we meet it at breakfast on Tuesday the 3rd, is so trivial and tedious as to be scarcely readable. Where is the man who, when asked whether there is " anything in the paper," has ever replied in the affirmative ? Yet this same newspaper of Tuesday the 3rd, when it comes to be used six months later for packing a pair of shoes or for drawing up a fire, is irresistibly absorbing. It grips. It cannot be laid aside. How came we, on the day of its publica- tion, to dismiss as unworthy of our attention this article on Hell by a leading jockey ? Had we no eyes for this Bishop's denunciation of the modern girl ? And what about this editorial imploring us to Pull Together for a policy since abandoned by the paper's proprietor ? Then, like all old newspapers, this one is an anthology of comic surnames ; Puke, Throttle, and Tapsley-Widdergoc these are all among the affianced ; and a man called Stringbotham has won first prize at a whist drive held in aid of the British Empire. It makes delightful reading.
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