'OUR OWN REPORTER.'

VERY FEW persons have any idea of the important part played by the reporter in modern social life. He is, as a rule, so unobtrusive, that he seldom comes under the eye of the public; and during a recent session, when there was a slight scandal caused through the out-spokenness of one knight of the pencil, who had given his opinion respecting a noble marquis in language more emphatic than complimentary, a good many people were reminded, almost for the first time in their lives, of the existence of this large and useful body of men. Yet the reporter is ubiquitous. His mission simply is to be eyes and ears for the world at large. Whereever he goes, he carries his note-book with him; whatever he does, he keeps his business in mind, and he never forgets that he is the servant of the public-and a very useful and important servant

too.

I wish I could give my reader a clear idea of

the actual importance of the place held by the reporter in society. Perhaps the best way of arriving at such an idea is to imagine, if possible, what society would be without him.

In the first place, there would be no record of the debates in parliament, nor any reports of 'extraparliamentary utterances.' Hungry politicians and excited popular leaders would have nothing to feed upon during times of agitation; would know nothing of what was being said in the Houses of Parliament beyond the vague hearsay reports brought away by listeners in the gallery. Gladstone, and Bright, and Disraeli would all waste their eloquence upon a few hundred or thousand men; their words would perish as they fell from their lips; and, practically, their influence would not be greater than that, say, of the ordinary occupant of a parish pulpit. There would be no interesting 'police news,' opening up a hundred strange phases of life, and putting us upon our guard against a thousand modes of imposition. Great trials would be conducted almost in privacy, for our courts of justice are ingeniously constructed to hold the smallest possible number of spectators, and to allow those present the least possible observation of what is going on. Those large meetings which are sometimes held to forward great movements, and which are often the means of evoking so vast

an amount of public benevolence, would no longer possess a tithe of their present influence. Country Dogberries would be allowed to play any pranks they pleased, in the name of justice, with no fear of outside opinion; and shareholders in railways or other great commercial companies would no longer have an opportunity of learning the actual position of their affairs, if they were unable to attend the half-yearly meeting, and listen to the chairman's statement.

A hundred lives might be swept away by a colliery explosion, without the public knowing more than the bare fact that such a catastrophe had taken place; another 'Royal Charter' might go to pieces on our shores, and months elapse before the friends of the sufferers were made acquainted with their fate; and great crimes, like the rescue of the Fenian prisoners, might be committed in our very midst without attracting the smallest notice on the part of the public. Mr. Bright never spoke truer words, than when, whilst addressing a meeting at Birmingham, he alluded to the reporters present as 'those gentlemen to whom the cause of liberty and good government was so greatly indebted.'

In no department of newspaper labour has such an advance been made of late years as in reporting. The fathers of the present generation could recall

the feats of Memory Woodfall,' who carried away a whole debate in his head without a single note to aid him; and there are still, both in London and the country, a few reporters extant who rely solely for their note-taking upon an abbreviated long-hand. Let no one, however, suppose that the ability to report in either of these manners will assist him now to a place upon the press. The ordinary reporter's first qualification is a knowledge of some efficient system of shorthand. Unless he is able to take what is called 'a full note' of an ordinarily rapid speaker, he can never hope to reach even a second-rate position in his profession; and unless he has so complete a command over his, fingers and pencil that he can make them follow the most rapid and disagreeable speaker with certainty and without a break, he can never gain any of the prizes which fall to the lot of the best shorthand writers. How difficult it is to obtain such a mastery over 'the stenographic demon,' only those who have tried it know.

·

Mr. Dickens-himself an experienced reporterhas given us some notion of the miseries which attend the student of shorthand in his David Copperfield.' The unhappy wight is oppressed as with a night-mare by the task he has taken in hand. He dreams about it in his sleep, and in

his waking hours it is never absent from his thoughts. At last, after months of labour, when he fondly fancies that he has mastered the crooked cipher, he essays to follow some slow-going speaker. To his horror, he finds that he cannot take down one word in four which is uttered. He must be stouthearted, indeed, to persevere after such a failure; but if he does so, he will find at each fresh trial that he can get a larger proportion of the speaker's words upon his note-book; until at last he accomplishes the great object of his ambition, and is able to take a verbatim report of some very easy orator.

Then comes the second part of his task-the reading of his notes. This is even a more trying ordeal than the other. There are the notes fairly written, and evidently correct; but what on earth do they mean? A word here and there he is able to make out, but not one single sentence in the whole speech can he translate. He is like some poor fellow who, recovered from a fever, finds all knowledge of reading and writing gone from him. Unutterable are the miseries endured by the young reporter at this stage of his career; and even to the last days of their lives, many old shorthand writers find it hard work to read their notes. All this is rather different from the popular notion of