ople have grown weary of them. They want
something new. For instance, if you read in your morning paper that
a man has shot another man, you know that the man who was shot was an
inoffensive person who never injured a soul, stood high in the community
in which he lived, and leaves a widow with four children. On the other
hand, you know without reading the account that the murderer shot his
victim in self-defence, and was apprehended by the detectives late last
night; that his counsel forbid him to talk to the reporters, and that it
is rumored that he comes of a good family living in New England.

"If a breach of trust is committed, you know that the defaulter was the
last man of whom such an act would be suspected, and, except in the one
detail of its location and sect, that he was prominent in some church.
You can calculate to a cent how much has been stolen by a glance at the
amount of space devoted to the account of the crime. Loaf of bread, two
lines. Thousand dollars, ten lines. Hundred thousand dollars,
half-column. Million dollars, a full column. Five million dollars,
half the front page, wood-cut of the embezzler, and two editorials, one
leader and one paragraph.

"And so with everything. We are creatures of habit. The expected always
happens, and newspapers are dull because the events they chronicle are
dull."

"Granting the truth of this," put in the School-Master, "what do you
propose to do?"

"Get up a newspaper that will devote its space to telling what hasn't
happened."

"That's been done," said the Bibliomaniac.

"To a much more limited extent than we think," returned the Idiot. "It
has never been done consistently and truthfully."

"I fail to see how a newspaper can be made to prevaricate truthfully,"
asserted Mr. Whitechoker. To tell the truth, he was greatly disappointed
with the idea, because he could not in the nature of things become one of
its beneficiaries.

[Illustration: "HE WAS NOT MURDERED"]

"I haven't suggested prevarication," said the Idiot. "Put on your front
page, for instance, an item like this: 'George Bronson, colored, aged
twenty-nine, a resident of Thompson Street, was caught cheating at poker
last night. He was not murdered.' There you tell what has not happened.
There is a variety about it. It has the charm of the unexpected. Then you
might say: 'Curious incident on Wall Street yesterday. So-and-so, who
was caught on the bear side of the market with 10,000 shares of J. B