re a stickful or two, but are you left to make your way unassisted
through the brief account? No. Your eye immediately catches a
time-saving headline like this:

DESERTED GIRL WIFE
TO HOLD UP MAN.

Having that concise legend before you, all you need to do, my dear
Marcel, is simply to decide for yourself whether our story deals with an
unscrupulous wretch who abandons his young wife to engage on a career of
highway robbery; or whether it is the history of a deserted girl who
becomes the wife of a professional outlaw; or whether it is a betrayed
young wife who gives herself up to the cause of elevating the human
race. A French reader, under the circumstances, would be compelled to go
through as much as thirty or forty lines of small print before he
secured the desired information. Thus it requires but a brief experience
with American headlines to recognise that when the Chicago _Evening
Post_ says

FINDS ENGLISH FOOD
FOR LAND TAX FAITH

it means that an American single-taxer, who has just returned from Great
Britain, believes that the English people is ready to listen to the
principles of the single-tax theory. And when the New York _Sun_ says

LA FOLLETTE TALKING BOLT

it does not mean that the Senator from Wisconsin is a manifestation of
crashing, celestial eloquence, but that he is advocating a secession
from the Republican party. Can you not see, my friend, what magnificent
economies of time are effected by headlines like

WATCH SPRINGS TRAP
FOR JAPANESE SPY

over a story dealing with the capture of an Oriental suspect by a
sentinel at one of the Pacific Coast forts, or

SCREAMING FRIARS TORTURED
CHILD MOTHER FAINTS

which does not mean that a society of howling friars have been guilty of
an atrocious crime upon an infant in the presence of its mother; or that
a band of religionists are driven by torture to cries of pain, while a
young mother faints at the sight. It only means that a poor mother, who
has suddenly gone insane, breaks into a house of refuge, where her
little boy is being cared for by a religious fraternity, accuses,
without warrant, the brothers of torturing her child, and faints. Or
take

FRENCH RACE WORN OUT
ENGLISH TO TRIUMPH.

These lines are not the summary of a study in national growth and decay,
but expressive of the fact that a French bicycle team wins a signal
victory over a group of exhausted English competitors. Do you see now
how far towards the art of simpli