Here is a poem of James Stephens, showing a child's taste for
sensational things:


A man was sitting underneath a tree
Outside the village, and he asked me
What name was upon this place, and said he
Was never here before. He told a
Lot of stories to me too. His nose was flat.
I asked him how it happened, and he said,
The first mate of the _Mary Ann_ done that
With a marling-spike one day, but he was dead,
And a jolly job too, but he'd have gone a long way
to have killed him.
A gold ring in one ear, and the other was bit off by
a crocodile, bedad,
That's what he said: He taught me how to chew.
He was a real nice man. He liked me too.


The taste that is fed by the sensational contents of the newspapers
and the dramatic excitement of street life, and some of the lurid
representations of the cinematograph, is so much stimulated that the
interest in normal stories is difficult to rouse. I will not here
dwell on the deleterious effects of over-dramatic stimulation, which
has been known to lead to crime, since I am keener to prevent the
telling of too many sensational stories than to suggest a cure when
the mischief is done.