house now has its own journals, advertising its goods, and delighting its patrons with its literary feast. The Press is a sleeping lion, which men are just waking into life. We should estimate rightly the great obligation that is upon us to use this immense power rightly. We, of all people, can ill afford to make blunders. We must teach wisely and lead aright, that the generation to come may bless us, as we bless those who have passed before us. Our Press association is well organized, and we should be able, at its meetings, to give each other wise counsel.
The study of other journals, from every point of view, has its benefits: their circulation and where they circulate; the editorials, the news letters, the personals; every department; reading articles on journalism; noting our own experiences from day to day; and getting the advice of those who have grown gray, and perhaps lost fortunes in the cause.
We should study the field from which our support must come. One New York publisher knows every county in every state and the literary caliber of its inhabitants, and is therefore able to put each book he has for sale on the market, at the best advantage to himself and the author. How many of our editors have thus studied the colored constituency of the various states?
We must watch the signs of the times and show business tact. I am forcibly reminded that the white race, even the ignorant portion, possesses this faculty largely beyond our own people, even the intelligent ones among us. A white man, knowing it was a season for negro revivals, furnished himself with a goodly-size bundle of spiritual hymns, and went shouting them up and down the street, and the colored people flocked to him with their pennies. Not a single white face did I see among them but that of the singer, who was gathering in the dimes and nickels from our poor. It was fit tribute to his business tact.
