human
Interviewing is another sort of homage nowadays to popular authorship; in America it is very rife,--and I never came to any city but, immediately on arrival, two or three representatives of opponent editors would call, and very courteously request to be allowed to turn me inside out, and then to report upon me: I only remember one or two cases (which I will not specify) wherein my inquisitor was not all I could have wished, or treated his patient victim more unkindly than perhaps a venial native humour might make necessary. Almost always the scribes were fair and gentlemanly. And in next morning's papers it was a pleasing excitement to find that one's extorted opinions on all manner of topics--social, religious, and political--were published by tens of thousands in conflicting newspapers, which took partisan views of the _obiter dicta_ of an illustrious being. I have many of these recorded conversations and comments thereon pasted down in the scrap-books aforesaid. In England, also, one does not escape; and indeed the pleasure of being examined for publication is here less mixed; for on this side of the Atlantic it has been found dangerous to report what might be damaging to a man socially or financially; although, however, no judicial notice is taken of ridicule or false criticism; and therein an author (however little he may care for it) can be libelled to any extent and without all remedy. Not but that some of the society papers have treated my unworthiness generously enough,--in particular, Edmunds' _World_, which, with too great severity and too little justice, has been taught to tell all truths charitably, if smartly,--and therefore I was glad to welcome his pleasant accredited interviewer, Mr. Becker, a year or two ago at Albury, who compliments me, not quite accurately perhaps, on