Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/94

 first generation which universally knows how to read, and already newspaper-English is taking on a character of its own, very different from the "journalese" of the old-fashioned reporters. By degrees a sort of slang, distinguished chiefly by brevity and conciseness, will evolve itself in the newspapers, especially those published in large towns—though indeed it is quite evident that in a few years daily newspapers will be published nowhere else. This terse, quick language will, after a period of reprobation, be adopted even by the less progressive newspapers, at first shocked to tears of indignant printer's ink by the defilement of the mother tongue, and it will accelerate vastly the task of "running through the paper," a task which must, even in the less hurried manners which I foresee for the future, be made as speedy as possible by the newspaper that would thrive and increase its circulation. Thus literature, already restive in an uncongenial wedlock, will finally obtain divorce from daily journalism. This does not mean that literature will perish. On the contrary, it will develop. And the periodicals other than newspapers will excel our own in merit of every sort. They will be permanent, dignified and, above all, literary. For with the education of the people really carried to perfection, and with universal leisure, the result of improved social arrangements even more