A MODERN BAYARD.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8368, 26 February 1907, Page 3

A MODERN BAYARD.

Hosts of people > aire saying that they are not what they want to be because the air is full of noise, the streets of tumult, and the world has become a great market-place, intent upon the buying and Belling of things. Not long ago a journalist died in Southern California. He passed his life between the office of a local newspaper and the Office of a metropolitan daily, and finally became one of the leading, officers of the Associated Press, and was conspicuous in the struggle of that organisation for supremacy in its field. As superintendent of an important division with its headquarters in New York, this journalist had to do with the gathering and distribution of the news of a continent. It was laid upon him to devise the most efficient service by wire to all parts of the United States, to Canada, and to Europe. It was his task also to extend that service into other and unoccupied fields; to bring into connection with the Assocation the most important and influential journals, and to carry to a higher degree of efficiency'an organisation which does its work on the skirmish line of modern alertness, invention, courage and audacity. The task was immense, the burden almost intolerable even to a strong man, requiring incessant alertness, great power of concentration, and unusual working ability. This man sat, as it were, with the telephone at his ear, listening to news from all parts of the world, and, with the key of the telegraph under his hand, sifting it, collating it, and putting it into form between the two instruments and sending it out as rapidly as he received it. In such a life there was little time for making one's soul, as the French say. Under the strain the health of this journalist gave way, and he was compelled to give up his work. He gave; a few informal talks about his experiences so refreshing in their spirit, so free from any professional element, so contagiously human that he was almost forced on to the platform. While it was full early to gain the mastery of another art, it was too late to regain the strength that had been spent in the most strenuous service. But when the time of leisure came, this man's soul emerged, and it was like the soul of- a child. In all the rush, tumult, and haste, in the fierceness of compeititon, he had kept his heart unspotted from the world. One of his friends said that he had the brain of a man, the heart of a woman, and the soul of a child; and his wife put the record of his life into a single phrase—"Without fear and without reproach." Truly every man makes or unmakes himself. Chevalier Bayard is not the creature of the age of chivalry, but of the chivalrous instinct which was in the soul of this busy journalist as truly as in the knight of the fifteenth century. It is quite as possible, though possibly not as easy, to preserve the quiet of the spirit, to have the heart of a child, and to keep unspotted from the world in the twentieth as in the first century.— Outlook (New York).