Page:1880. A Tramp Abroad.djvu/646

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F.


GERMAN JOURNALS.

The daily journals of Hamburg, Frankfort, Baden, Munich and Augsburg are all constructed on the same general plan. I speak of these because I am more familiar with them than with any other German papers. They contain no "editorials" whatever; no "personals,"—and this is rather a merit than a demerit, perhaps; no funny-paragraph column; no police court reports; no reports of proceedings of higher courts; no information about prize fights or other dog fights, horse races, walking-matches, yachting contests, rifle-matches, or other sporting matters of any sort; no reports of banquet-speeches; no department of curious odds and ends of floating fact and gossip; no "rumors" about anything or anybody; no prognostications or prophecies about anything or anybody; no lists of patents granted or sought, or any reference to such things; no abuse of public officials, big or little, or complaints against them, or praises of them; no religious column Saturdays, no rehash of cold sermons Mondays; no "weather indications;" no "local item" unveilings of what is happening in town,—nothing of a local nature, indeed, is mentioned, beyond the movements of some prince or the proposed meeting of some deliberative body.

After so formidable a list of what one can't find in a German daily, the question may well be asked. What can be found in it? It is easily answered: A child's handful of telegrams, mainly about European national and international political movements; letter-correspondence about the same things; market reports. There you have it. That is what a German daily is made of. A German daily is the slowest and saddest and dreariest of the inventions of man. Our own dailies infuriate the reader, pretty often;

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