steadily and consistently heated by all these influences; the
journalists had tasted blood, prospectively, and were in the mood
for more; everything in the matter prepared them for further
outbursts of moral indignation. And when a gasping reporter
rushed in in the last hours of the evening with the announcement
that the two heroes of the Police Court had literally been found
fighting in a London back garden, with a shopkeeper bound and
gagged in the front of the house, the editors and sub-editors
were stricken still as men are by great beatitudes.

The next morning, five or six of the great London dailies burst
out simultaneously into great blossoms of eloquent
leader-writing. Towards the end all the leaders tended to be the
same, but they all began differently. The _Daily Telegraph_, for
instance began, "There will be little difference among our
readers or among all truly English and law-abiding men touching
the, etc. etc." The _Daily Mail_ said, "People must learn, in the
modern world, to keep their theological differences to
themselves. The fracas, etc. etc." The _Daily News_ started,
"Nothing could be more inimical to the cause of true religion
than, etc. etc." The _Times_ began with something about Celtic
disturbances of the equilibrium of Empire, and the _Daily
Express_ distinguished itself splendidly by omitting altogether
so controversial a matter and substituting a leader about
goloshes.

And the morning after that, the editors and the newspapers were
in such a state, that, as the phrase is, there was no holding
them. Whatever secret and elvish thing it is that broods over
editors and suddenly turns their brains, that thing had seized on