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. 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: