them.

This is a profound truth. If anyone doubts it, let him listen to a debate
in the House of Commons, and compare the impressions of the evening with
the impressions furnished by the parliamentary sketch in his daily paper
the next morning. The difference will be little less than miraculous. Yet
the bored observer of the previous night will find in the printed article
no discrepancies, no insidious departures from sober fact; and as he reads
it, the conviction will grow upon him that his own impressions were wrong,
and that after all a debate in the House of Commons is a remarkably
amusing and delightful entertainment. If the newspapers ceased to report
the proceedings of Parliament, the uncomfortable benches of the Strangers'
Gallery would for ever remain empty, simply because the delusion which now
fills them nightly during the session would die for lack of sustenance.
Again, take the case of the amiable feminine crowds which collect upon the
Mall whenever Her Majesty holds a Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace. What
has induced them to forsake lunch and the domestic joys in order to
frequent that draughty thoroughfare? Nothing but accounts which they have
read in vivacious newspapers of the sights to be seen there on these state
occasions. They go; they see; they return fatigued and privately
disappointed, with a vague feeling that some one has misled them. But with
the arrival later in the afternoon of the vendor of special editions, they
begin to be reassured. Under the heading "To-day's Drawing Room," they
encounter a description of incidents which they themselves have witnessed.
The sweet thought crosses their minds: "Perhaps that was written by the
curious woman with eye-glasses who stood near to me;" and by the time
dinner is over nothing would persuade them that the Mall on Drawing Room
day is not one of the most interesting places in the world.

So the journalist continues to gain a livelihood by forcing his rosy