TOPICS OF THE DAY.

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

OUR columns have been so crowded for the past three or four weeks with reports of important conventions of Firemen that much correspondence and other interesting matter has been crowded out. This week we make room for some of the delayed letters, and for a goodly batch of others of late date. This issue of THE JOURNAL enables us to “ catch up ” with our correspondents and with ourselves, and hereafter we hope to keep abreast with current news and events.

WITH this issue of THE JOURNAL we enter upon the seventh year of its publication. Anticipating this anniversary, we have already enlarged the paper to twenty-four pages in order to accommodate our advertisers and give room for a larger amount of reading matter. THE JOURNAL now gives as many pages of reading matter each week, exclusive of advertisements, as would make the full size of any of our competitors, while oursubscription price remains as it always has, at $2 a year. No Fireman’s paper ever established has met with the success that has fallen to the lot of THE JOURNAL, and we are duly grateful to the Firemen of the country for the support and confidence they have given us. We are not much given to boasting regarding our success, but while some of our competitors overflow with braggadocia and self-laudation, we have been content to pursue the even tenor of our way, permitting THE JOURNAL to go forth upon its merits alone. That is the standard by which all enterprises will be judged sooner or later, and no amount of editorial vaporing can change the fact. On this, our seventh anniversary, we beg to return our sincere thanks to all who have in any way contributed to our success, and to assure them that we shall in the future, as in the past, endeavor to merit their confidence.