The reason, I am sure, that journalism is so popular a calling, in spite of its many drawbacks, is this: each journalist feels he is the boy walking up and down with the cane.

The Government, the Classes, and the Masses, Society, Art, and Literature, are the other children sitting on the doorstep.

He instructs and improves them.
But I digress.

It was to excuse my present permanent disinclination to be the vehicle of useful information that I recalled these matters.

Let us now return.
Somebody, signing himself "Balloonist," had written to ask concerning the manufacture of hydrogen gas.