But the trained English
reader would know that there was more to come and that the air of
quiet was only assumed, and he would read on and on until at last the
tragic interest heightened, the four shots were fired, with a good
long pause after each for discussion of the path of the bullet
through Mr. Ap. Jones.
I am not saying that either the American way or the British way is
the better. They are just two different ways, that's all. But the
result is that anybody from the United States or Canada reading
the English papers gets the impression that nothing is happening:
and an English reader of our newspapers with us gets the idea that
the whole place is in a tumult.
When I was in London I used always, in glancing at the morning
papers, to get a first impression that the whole world was almost
asleep. There was, for example, a heading called INDIAN INTELLIGENCE
that showed, on close examination, that two thousand Parsees had died
of the blue plague, that a powder boat had blown up at Bombay, that
some one had thrown a couple of bombs at one of the provincial
governors, and that four thousand agitators had been sentenced to
twenty years hard labour each. But the whole thing was just called
"Indian Intelligence." Similarly, there was a little item called,
"Our Chinese Correspondent." That one explained ten lines down, in
very small type, that a hundred thousand Chinese had been drowned in
a flood.
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