Steeplejack Author:James Huneker Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II MUSICAL JOURNALISM Theatrical journalism was even more personal, fisticuffs being the last resort. ' To-day musical journalism / is greatly improved. It... more » must always encourage mediocrity, else perish. And the same may be said of the daily press. The music-critics when I came to New York were Henry T. Finck, of The Evening Post; H. E. Krehbiel, of The Tribune; William J. Henderson, of The Times; this was 1887; later Mr. Henderson followed me as music editor of The Sun, a position he still holds. John T. Jackson, of The World; Bowman, of The Sun; his wife, Mrs. Bowman, succeeded him; Albert Steinberg, of The Herald, then a real force in the musical world, and other men on the afternoon newspapers, such as Willy von Sachs, Edgar J. Levey, both dead. Jackson is dead, so is Steinberg, but the rest are alive, vigorous, and still "kicking." It is the function of a critic to "kick," otherwise he is considered moribund. Add Richard Aldrich to the list—for when I became dramatic editor of The Sun in 1902, there was quite a displacement in our frog-pond; Henderson left The Times for The Sun; Aldrich, the assistant music-critic of The Tribune, went to The Times, Edward Ziegler, my colleague, took over my job on Town Topics—where for years I had more fun than in a circus—and also assumed the musical editorship of The American and afterwards The Herald. And Leonard Liebling followed me on The Musical Courier. To-day Ziegler is a young chap who dyes his ' hair iron-grey in order to appear older. At the Metropolitan Opera House he is closely allied to Director Gatti- Casazza. AH these men—Ziegler excepted—I worked with from the beginning and they are still my friends. f Something to boast about if you realise that the "artistic temperament" pervades the soul of the music-critic; that a...« less