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sion, and proved itself in possession of the true jurisprudential profundity. By an innocent fiction the local agent, who usually sent a dozen despatches a-day, was enabled to send one only by regarding the first eleven as merely parts of despatches, signing each one "More," "More Coming," and affixing his name in full to the twelfth, at midnight. The practice of signing More still adheres, though the reason has long since vanished: and there is no signature more honored in the Associated Press office. Always on the lookout to guard against puffs and first-ofApril messages, commonly known as "sells," this office scrutinizes first the signature, and More, or More Coming, is prima facie evidence of genuineness. A newly-appointed agent at Norfolk, Va., who received a despatch from New York, chronicling the arrival of the ship Black Warrior in the following regulation form: "New York, 30th. Black Warrior arrived. More Coming," signalized his advent on a new field of labor by startling the people of his quiet city with the news that a delegation of thirty black warriors had arrived in New York, and more were hourly expected.

The regular Associated Press telegrams are what would be called, in Europe, "semi-official." The special despatch is colored to suit the particular journal, but the press-despatch is strictly non-partisan, for it goes to papers of all politics and all religions. The local agents, on account of their presumed fairness, and because they have it in their power to bring despatches before so many readers, have the run of official records everywhere, often where the "special" would not be tolerated. The Government appreciates the power of the Associated Press. The Washington agent frequently has his news brought to him 'by the heads of the Departments. the Washington news is not always startling. The decisions of the Internal Revenue Commissioner, and the proposals of the Naval Constructing Bureau, are matters that the Government

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is more interested in getting printed everywhere than the public is to read. A waggish manifolder once headed one of these documents with the words, "Government Advertisement." Instantly a storm of questions came from the newspaper offices, as to who would be responsible for the bill. But the editors, on being informed that the matter was really telegraphic news, for which they would be expected to pay five cents a word on the next Saturday, printed it with the other telegrams, leaded, and garnished with head-lines.

It would certainly be strange if political bias and prejudice did not occasionally crop out in the twenty millions of despatches received at this office annually. Once or twice a-year the Democratic editors formally complain of the radical complexion of the Eastern and Western news, and the Republican editors, in their rejoinder, have a valid set-off in the rebel tone of the Southern despatches. Bear and forbear is generally the motto, until the inscrutable Pennsylvania election comes, when the Associated Press makes due amends by imitating every body else in electing both tickets for a week or so, until the mail advices come to hand.

The stranger in this office will note that the despatches from the East come early, and those from the West late; but the wonder will cease precisely at the moment when the reflection forces itself upon him that the world is round, and revolves eastwardly. The great international boat-race at London, in August last, was completed at six o'clock in the evening, but the full details were printed here at half-past two. The closing markets at London and Paris, dated at five in the afternoon, are invariably printed here before three; but the despatches from San Francisco, not half so far away as Paris, are the last received at night, and sometimes do not arrive till the next day.

The notion prevalent in some quarters that the Associated Press is a gigantic moneyed corporation, grown rich by the sale of its news, and that its own bills are met with the profits received

from others, need scarcely be seriously dealt with. The regular morning journals forming the Associated Press, pay about fourteen thousand dollars each, per annum, for the news-service of this office; those having Sunday editions fifteen thousand. The evening paper (the Express) pays about eight thousand, as do also the Post and the Commercial Advertiser. The money paid gives a fair idea of the proportionate amount of news furnished. The evening papers pay rather more than one third of the total bill, and receive four ninths of the total amount of news.

How many hundreds of thousands of miles of land-wire, ap what scores of submarine cables, are pressed into the service every day to satisfy this awful craving of the American people for the latest intelligence! It is a novel sight to stand at the dépôts, so to speak, and watch those little aerial railroad-trains, as they sweep in at the windows, freighted with news, now from Washington, then from Chicago, then from London. Many of these despatches are in the French and other foreign languages; many are so condensed and squeezed together that they might as well be to another than a manifolder; some are in "cipher," a sort of abbreviated language, known only to the manifolders, where one word stands arbitrarily for an entire English sentence; and others, again, though in open English, are so corrupted and blundered by frequent re-writings at repeating stations on the telegraph lines, as to be almost unintelligible. But the manifolder sticks at nothing. Foreign languages, legal and nautical technicalities, the mysteries of the arts, sciences, and all known trades and professions, he is expected to prepare for the printer's hands at a moment's notice, ready to run the gauntlet of universal criticism. While the individual newspaper must have its musical critic, financial editor, and sporting editor, the details of a great battle, the price of land, Congressional proceedings, an obituary, a Democratic triumph, and a conflagration, all come within the prehensile

grasp of the manifolder. Given an Associated Press in 1570, and the Shakespearian problem becomes easy.

The devices of the distant agent to convey much in little, and thereby innocently defraud the telegraph, are many of them perfect wonders of invention, and are only matched by the ingenuity of the manifolder in restoring the words left to his imagination. In the despatches, sevening and smorning mean this evening and this morning, fob, free on board, swells, as well as, and certain high-sounding capitals are degraded to York, Rio, Orleans, Bayres, and Frisco. But the manifolder is not always absolutely perfect. Sometimes he neglects to expunge the economical abbreviations of the local agents, which were never designed to get as far as the printing-offices. Then conservative old philologists file protests against the creation of such verbs and participles as burgled, excurted, injuncted, interviewed, incendiaried, sleeting, and conflagrating, and the Associated Press is held to a rigid accountability for "pouring a stream of cold poison into the English language every morning." It is said the Americans have preserved many old words which the passion for Johnsonian diction has banished from conversation in England, but it is doubtful whether these are of them.

In order to save expense, despatches from remote cities, especially those by the cables, are cut down to mere hints. Notwithstanding the columns of European news printed every day, it remained for a member of the Association itself to proclaim to the world that the Associated Press had not received an average of a hundred cable words a-day since the cables were laid. Surely, after such iconoclasm, it can be a secret no longer that the two words "Vesuvius grows," were once metamorphosed into the following

IMPORTANT NEWS FROM ITALY.

"London, March 25.-Telegraphic despatches just at hand from Naples announce that the eruption of Mount Vesuvius is continually increasing in

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Enthusiasts may praise the musical Italian, the facile French, and the majestic Spanish, but the Associated Press has demonstrated that the copious English is also the language of brevity. But it must be confessed this was a mere frolic of the manifolder. Though the mail-dates received subsequently sustained the florid description, he was reprimanded, but escaped much easier than his companion, who headed one of the stereotyped despatches from General McClellan's army, "All quiet on the Potomac," with the words Deus nobis hoc otium fecit. He was discharged as incorrigible.

The strangest freaks of lightning occur in the telegraph offices. The jubilant telegraph persists in having doubted doubled, being bring, mediate meditate, corn coin, and nine none, and it is a question whether the names Waverley, Binghamton, Owego, and Ithaca were ever carried a hundred miles away from home in a telegram without violence to their orthography. Such errors as these the experienced manifolder corrects at a glance; but there are times when the telegraph surpasses itself and reduces him to his wit's end. This was the case when the steamer "Cena" was announced at a southern port. The manifolder knew there was none such. But what should it be? After ransacking shipping-lists, and cudgelling his brains to no purpose, as a last resort he wrote down the telegraphic characters for Cena," thus,

and saw they were precisely those that would be used to write Iona; and that was the answer to the puzzle. In this way are corrected the mistakes of care

less telegraph operators, made, perhaps, a thousand miles away, and perpetuated at every repeating station. So long as these mistakes are huge blunders, not much harm can come from them. But occasionally they are insidious, and no amount of watchfulness can detect them. A recent despatch from Omaha contained the words, "Company Fifth U. S. Infantry attacked by Indians on plains. All scalped." It was a pretty serious matter, but the despatch was plain enough. While the manifolder was copying it, and reflecting on the affliction it must carry to a thousand hearthstones (if he ever have time for such reflections), another despatch came to hand, reading: "Chicago. Correction. In our Omaha, for scalped read escaped," and peace flowed into his soul.

The bustling manifolding-room contains, also, the bureaus of the provincial papers, which depend upon the Associated Press for their supply of news. The country journals are grouped together, according to their geographical positions, in order that the despatches may be distributed more conveniently and expeditiously. The groups are called the Western press, the Eastern press, the Philadelphia press, the State press, the Boston press, the Southern press, the Far Southern press, &c. Each of these organizations has reporters in the manifolding-room, night and day, who have access to all the Associated Press news, and who send such parts of it as are likely to be interesting to the people of their respective sections. As fast as they compile their reports, they forward them to the telegraph office by the elevated railwayroute before mentioned, duly directed "State press," or "Southern press," as the case may be, when their responsibility ends, and that of the telegraph begins. Let the State press be taken as an illustration of the manner in which the telegraph performs the distributing service. At certain specified hours, convenient alike for the telegraph and the particular editions of the newspapers to be served, the operator, with

one manipulation of his magic key, transmits the news simultaneously to Poughkeepsie, Hudson, Albany, Troy, Utica, Syracuse, Auburn, Elmira, Owego, Binghamton, Rome, Oswego, Rochester, and Buffalo, New York, to Rutland and Burlington, Vermont, and to Scranton, Pennsylvania. These stations are not all on the same wire, nor on the same route; but by a certain combination, through an American invention called the telegraphic repeater, they are brought so in effect, and the news might be sent to a thousand offices as easily as to one. The other groups are served in like manner. But it must not be supposed the Associated Press supplies these organizations only. They are the chiefest, certainly; but despatches are sent every day to London, and thence all over Europe; to Havana and throughout Cuba; and on steamer-days summaries are forwarded to Aspinwall, which are used wherever there are telegraphs in Central and South America, and are then re-sent from Panama to Australia and New Zealand. The San Francisco agent, in the same way, exchanges his home and European news with news-gleaners at the Sandwich Islands, in China, Japan, &c. It would be rather more difficult to tell where the Associated Press news does not go.

Over in the corner of the manifolding-room still another little railroadtrain stands ready to trundle messages across the street, diagonally to the Commercial News Department. This new feature deserves attention for a moment. The American prices of stocks, bonds, and produce have always been regulated in good part by those of London and Liverpool. The merchant who receives the first advices is enabled to forestall the home market. Ever since the celebrated financial achievement of the Rothschilds, which their first knowledge of the result of Waterloo rendered easy, this desire to get ahead in matters of news likely to affect markets has gradually grown to be a monstrous evil, and opened the door to all manner of corruption. False news, fraudulent quo

tations, and stock-jobbing" despatches," to deceive and defraud, were circulated every day, and the subordinates of the telegraph and press made to run a terrible gauntlet of temptation to prove false to their trusts. Partly to correct this evil, and partly to provide a new source of revenue, the Associated Press and the telegraph formed a copartnership for making all commercial news, immediately on its receipt and before publication, the property of the public everywhere. The Association, on its part, furnishes its commercial and important general news despatches, domestic as well as foreign, and the telegraph distributes them, at a trifling cost, as nearly simultaneously as possible throughout the Union. But this system, while it erects a bulwark against fraud and stratagem for the business community, is not without one slight disadvantage. Four fifths of all European despatches are commercial in their character. But an Associated Press cable-telegram carries the prices of fifty staple articles, and which, by this distributing process, must go far toward meeting the wants of every business man in America. The three cables are not crowded, nor are they likely to be for twenty years to come. “Multiplying the facilities" may be a trifle overdone, as any company which lays a new cable within that time will probably find to its cost. Consequently this doubling up, whereby one commercial despatch serves the turn of the whole American continent, cannot but make great inroads on the private revenue of the cable companies.

By parity of reasoning one would think the interests of the Associated Press antipodal to those of the telegraph-that a system which saves six sevenths of a sum to the one must necessarily lose it to the other. But the press is the sheet-anchor of the telegraphs. In 1866 the telegraphic service of combined continental Europe, for despatches of all sorts, press, social, and commercial, aggregated less than two hundred and sixty millions of words. In that year the American newspapers

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paid one domestic telegraphic company alone fifteen millions of dollars for three hundred millions of words; and the greater part of that immense mass was sent at night, after business hours, when the telegraph lines would not have been otherwise occupied at all. If there were no such organization as the Associated Press, the individual papers could not bear the enormous expense of the news that is now published every day; and if they could, the telegraphic systems of the world would not be sufficient to carry it. Consequently the mails would supersede the telegraph as a transmitting medium, except in great emergencies; journalistic enterprise would be no more marked in America than it is in Germany, and we should soon cease to have six newspapers to any other country's one, as now. This associated system, then, is in strict keeping with our national institutions; for, while it may operate harshly in isolated cases, its tendency is to bring the news within the reach of all, to foster cheap news

papers, and thus promote the cause of general education.

The most grateful words to the manifolder are 66 Good-night." "Good-night is the signal for closing the reports until the next day, and is understood wherever there are telegraphs or newspapers. The western news is all sifted through the hands of the agent at Cleveland, which is one of the great news repeating stations. No southern news can reach the agency without first coming to the Washington agent. When these agents, therefore, telegraph their "good-nights" to this office, which they usually do from one to four o'clock in the morning, the day's work is considered done, and the welcome words are quickly caught up and sent along the gleaming wires from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The manifolders, in the fulness of their hearts, write them at the foot of their last item to the newspapers, and editors, reporters, compositors, pressmen, swell the long chorus of praise to Good-night.

LOVE IN FIJI.

MY EARLY LIFE AMONG THE CANNIBALS.

[A singular chance has thrown into the hands of the present editor the manuscript of the narrative which is now submitted to the public. It describes, perhaps too graphically for the most artistic effect, some of the atrocities which the writer saw among the savages who were the companions of his youth. Yet it seems undesirable to detract from its value as a record of an extraordinary experience; and the story is therefore published without excisions. Its editor especially desires to vouch for the accuracy of the pictures drawn in the following account, and would refer the reader, if any additional confirmation be needed, to the pages of Williams' "History of the Fiji Islands," where customs not less atrocious than those described in the following pages are set forth.-T. M. C.]

THE circumstances which I am about to relate are not the offspring of an idle fancy. They are the record of an experience as rare, perhaps, as any that has fallen to the lot of a Christian AngloSaxon during the present century; and I address myself to the task of relating them in the consciousness that I am about to record what has never yet been fully described.

I.

lish parents, who were then residing in the Tonga group. During my childhood and youth my life was indeed a strange one; for it partook in almost equal proportions of the savage and of the civilized element. I was borne along like a skiff at the meeting of contending waters, and floated now in the pure and now in the turbid stream. As I look back upon the life so strangely

I was born in the South Seas, of Eng- divided between conflicting conditions,

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