CHAPTER IX.

THE DEVELOPING NEWSPAPER.

HE accession of Dr. Holland to the Republican was an important event in its history. He and Mr. Bowles supplemented each other. Mr. Bowles was a born journalist, and showed early an instinct for news, an aptitude for politics, and a skill in administration. His development as a thinker and writer came later. Dr. Holland, who was seven years his senior, came to the paper equipped with more of literary culture and taste, and was always a writer rather than an editor. He was strong in his convictions, warm in his feelings, sensitive to the moral element in any question, and the master of a forcible, lucid, and popular style. His interest lay not so much in politics as in the personal conduct of life, and social usages and institutions. His editorials in the Republican were one of the earliest signs that the newspaper press was beginning to exercise, along with its other functions, that of direct moral instruction, which had hitherto been almost a monopoly of the church. Many of his articles. were short and pithy lay sermons. They dealt directly with morals and religion, in their practical rather than theological applications. They discussed such topics as the mutual duties of husbands and wives, of laborers and employers; the principles of conduct for young men and young women, and the like. This was an innovation in

journalism. It found favor among a community which takes life seriously and earnestly. It signified in truth an expansion of the newspaper's possibilities, which has as yet only begun to be worked out. Dr. Holland was admirably qualified for a pioneer in this kind of work. He was so far in sympathy with the established churches and the accepted theology that he reached and held a wide constituency, while he was little trammeled by theological or ecclesiastical technicalities. He was quite as impatient as Mr. Bowles of any assumption of authority by a party or a church, and the Republican early showed an independence of the clergy, and a willingness to criticise them on occasion, which often drew wrath upon its head. But its attitude toward the churches and the religion they represented, though an independent was also a friendly one. Such theological coloring as the paper had, came from Dr. Holland rather than Mr. Bowles, and was what would now be described as liberal orthodox. The tone was conservative as to the observance of Sunday, and similar questions, and even opposed the theater as an immoral institution—a position from which Dr. Holland receded at a later time, while Mr. Bowles perhaps never shared it. Toward the aggressive social and intellectual movements of which New England was prolific thirty or forty years ago,-Woman's Rights, Abolitionism, Transcendentalism,- both editors were unfriendly.

In general, Dr. Holland added to the paper a higher literary tone, and a broader recognition of human interests. He had a sympathetic perception of the pathos, the humor, the dignity, in the lives of the common folk. He wrote one article on "The little tin pails," carried by the early and late procession of laborers; the suggestion of homely fare, of wifely provision, of the long day's labor cheered by the thought of the evening

welcome. He was eminently a man of sentiment and feeling. It belonged to his mind, and to his somewhat narrow education, to vividly see and present one side of a question, rather than to comprehend its entirety; and this was at once his limitation and his strength, for the average reader follows most sympathetically a writer who goes straight to a conclusion, and does not embarrass him with qualifications and balancings. Mr. Bowles, on the other hand, guided himself by his reason more than by his feelings, and had a growing instinct and capacity for looking at all sides of the question. It was he who gave its central inspiration to the Republican, and who held its helm, though Dr. Holland's contribution to the paper was important and unique. The two men worked together harmoniously, but never came into personal intimacy. Dr. Holland had not a little of the clerical attributes. While in his social tastes he was democratic, he avoided the companionship of men whose moral standards were different from his own. His faith, his feeling, his sentiment,- all perfectly genuine,—were freely expressed to the world; they were the material of his writing; they found expression in his conversation. He craved appreciation and recognition. He was a man of striking and handsome presence, and in his bearing there was something a little suggestive, as it were, of gown and bands, a touch of self-consciousness. Mr. Bowles, on the other hand, was always ready to hob-nob with any man, saint or sinner, in whom he found any likable quality. His highest aspirations, his finest feelings, were not carried in sight of the world, they were seldom openly expressed in his writings, or in his ordinary conversation. He bore himself like a man of the world. Any approach to assumption or display of religion provoked his sarcasm or scorn. No doubt Holland often thought Bowles irreverent, not to say heathenish,

and Bowles thought Holland something of a prig. There were no collisions between them; each of them respected the other's rights and guarded his own; but they kept always at a little distance, and their terms of mutual address were never more familiar than "Mr. Bowles" and "Dr. Holland." Each man liked to have the first place in his world, though the one cared more for the reality of power and the other desired the outward signs of recognition. Opposite as they were in some respects, they both had the adaptiveness and the self-control to work together harmoniously and efficiently for many years, until circumstances parted them.

The Republican was all the time growing broader, brighter, fuller of information. It was making itself a necessity to everybody. It reaped continually from wider fields. Telegraphic news was now a constant feature. In 1850 there had come to be a regular column of "Local Items," which was probably the first thing that most readers looked at. About the same time, Mr. Bowles began a weekly column of "Religious Intelligence "— a new thing in secular journalism. By Dr. Holland, seemingly, there was given for a time in each Saturday's paper a chapter of "Sunday Thoughts,"-practical applications of Christianity. The paper showed a growing capacity for getting hold of whatever could interest its readers. Its editorial matter was less in long articles, and more in pithy and pungent paragraphs. Politics was still the chief staple of its discussions, and was treated always with lucid vigor. It had not yet come to be a pioneer of political thought. It announced itself as "Whig "— "thoroughly, devotedly, but not blindly Whig" (January 16, 1851), long after the Whig party really had no distinctive opinions on the great rising questions.

The paper's growth was won by unsparing labor, by close economy, by making the utmost of each day, yet

looking always toward the future. After six years of existence, it claimed (May 8, 1850) a larger circulation than any daily paper in New England outside of Boston. "Up to the present time," it added, "the Republican has been no direct source of profit to its proprietors. As fast as money has been made, it has been invested in improvements, and even to a greater extent, by several thousands; but we have now reached a point where we hope to see the scale descending on the other side."

Dr. Holland, just after Mr. Bowles's death, wrote as follows:

"As I think of my old associate, and the earnest exhausting work he was doing when I was with him, he seems to me like a great golden vessel, rich in color and roughly embossed, filled with the elixir of life, which he poured out without the slightest stint for the consumption of this people. This vessel was only full at the first and it was never replenished. It was filled for an expenditure of fifty or sixty years, but he kept the stream so large that the precious contents were all decanted at thirty. The sparkle, the vivacity, the drive, the power of the Republican, as I knew it in the early days, the fresh and ever eager interest with which it was every morning received by the people of Springfield and the Connecticut Valley, the superiority of the paper to other papers of its class, its ever widening influenceall these cost life. We did not know when we tasted it and found it so charged with zest that we were tasting heart's blood, but that was the priceless element that commended it to our appetites. A pale man, weary and nervous, crept home at midnight, or at one, two, or three o'clock in the morning, and while all nature was fresh and the birds were singing, and thousands of eyes were bending eagerly over the results of his night's labor, he was tossing and trying to sleep. Yet this work, so terrible in its exactions and its consequences, was the joy of this man's life-it was this man's life; and as the best exponent of this kind of devotion to an idea and a life-work I have ever known, I give its memory most affectionate reverence.

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