MEANER THAN A THIEF.

Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1160, 20 March 1874, Page 4

MEANER THAN A THIEF.

Of all the tribe of grovelling creatures of brazen brow aud callous sensibilities, tho Sau Francisco Interviewer is, saya tho Newsletter, at once tho meanest and most impudent. It has long been a matter of wonder with tho Town Crier that such a community as the one in which we live should so long'havo submitted to'tho inquisitorial tyranny of this shameless tool of tho shameless proprietors of tho sensational newspapers. To the Interviewer nothing is sacred. He respects neither the decencies of social life nor the privacy of recent bereavement. He no longer listens furtively at keyholes, or tineaks into wedding parties to which he has not been invited in the safe disguise of a gentleman ; but with the truculent assurance of a bravo boldly demands admittance, and propounds his insolent interrogatories with an assumption of magisterial authority. He rouses people out of their beds at their private residences

at all hours of the night to subject them to an Old Bailey croes-examina-tion. IJo meddles with tho administration of justice, I examines [prisoners aud persons charged with crime, aud presents them to the public for trial in advance of a judicial investigation. He torments, insults, and bullies women in distress whose husbands or fathers have committed suicide, or who have been arrested upon soldo grave accusation. If a distinguished man, or I'a public character arrives overland, the Interviewer haunts him at his hotel before he has had time to divest himself of his duster. There is no nuisance by which we are now afflicted thatcails so loudly for abatement. The question suggests itself why do respectable men aud women submit to the domination of this vulgar inquisitor 1 Why is he not kicked out of every houso into which he intrudes ? Why do officials of every grade answer his impertinent questions, and treat him as if ho were himself clothed with some sort of official authority ? Why do those who despise and detest him, who know that he is au ignoble creature engaged in a dirty business, a creature more brazen than a sailor-boarding-house runner, and meaner than a thief—why do men who know this still treat him as if he were a gentleman? It is because they|have not the moral courage to show the disgust and indignation they feel. They dread the revenge which the rebuffed seeker for information would instantly take in the columns of his sensational print. Howover brave in the face of ordinary dangers, their courage oozes away before the prospect of a scumious paragraph.