"Bohemia is a roving kingdom--a realm in the air, like Arthur's England. It sometimes happens that, as a gipsy's child turns out to be a prince's child, who, perforce, dwells in a palace, so the Bohemian is found in a fine house and high society. Bohemia is a fairyland on this hard earth. It is Arcadia in New York."
Ah! yes, this is all very beautiful, but rent had to be paid; and the literary workers of to-day never forget that journalism is the only branch of literature that from the outset enables a man to live and pay his way. And yet when we remember Henry Clapp, Fitz James O'Brien, N. G. Shepherd, and Ned Wilkins, we feel that every working newspaper man is better to-day because they struggled and starved; because they lived in the free air of Bohemia.
With the worker in the art, "the struggle for existence" begins with his first day's apprentice task as a reporter. No man ever became a journalist who did not serve that apprenticeship. There is no hope for him outside of complete success. It requires several years for him to learn to get news and to properly write it. One failure will blight his entire career. Unlike any other commercial commodity, news once lost cannot be recouped.
Dr. Samuel Johnson was the first Parliamentary reporter. He got a list of the speakers, then went to his lodgings in a dingy court off Fleet Street and wrote out speeches for the Lords and the Commons. He did this for years and not one of the men so honored is on record as having denied the accuracy of the report(?). Dr. Johnson made the reputations of half a dozen men who are to-day mentioned among the great English orators. They were honorable men, as the world goes, but not one of them, except Edmund Burke, ever acknowledged his indebtedness to Samuel Johnson. I never have known a senator or congressman to thank a Washington correspondent for making his speech presentable to educated eyes. He has been known to grow warm in praise of all classes of humanity, from Tipperary to Muscovy, but never a word of commendation escapes his lips for a newspaper man. He believes in philanthropy, but as Napoleon said to Talleyrand, he "wants it to be a long way off!" (_Je veux seulement que ce soit de la philanthropie lointaine._)