And there was another little item labelled "Foreign Gossip,"
under which was mentioned that the Pope was dead, and that the
President of Paraguay had been assassinated.
In short, I got the impression that I was living in an easy drowsy
world, as no doubt the editor meant me to. It was only when the
Montreal Star arrived by post that I felt that the world was still
revolving pretty rapidly on its axis and that there was still
something doing.
As with the world news so it is with the minor events of ordinary
life,--birth, death, marriage, accidents, crime. Let me give an
illustration. Suppose that in a suburb of London a housemaid has
endeavoured to poison her employer's family by putting a drug in the
coffee. Now on our side of the water we should write that little
incident up in a way to give it life, and put headings over it that
would capture the reader's attention in a minute. We should begin it
thus:
PRETTY PARLOR MAID
DEALS DEATH-DRINK
TO CLUBMAN'S FAMILY
The English reader would ask at once, how do we know that the parlor
maid is pretty? We don't. But our artistic sense tells us that she
ought to be. Pretty parlor maids are the only ones we take any
interest in: if an ugly parlor maid poisoned her employer's family we
should hang her. Then again, the English reader would say, how do we
know that the man is a clubman? Have we ascertained this fact
definitely, and if so, of what club or clubs is he a member? Well, we
don't know, except in so far as the thing is self-evident.
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