The Life of a Celebrated Buccaneer

  CHAPTER XIII.

  The means the Buccaneer had of gaining his information, namely, throughthe medium of his daily press, was confusing in the extreme; for all hispapers took sides and showed the fighting instincts of the head of thefamily. Columns were written upon the same subject which was so deckedout in party colours as to baffle all efforts at recognition. Each paperacted the part of an advocate, and by fixing upon the weak parts of anadversary tried to conceal its own shortcomings. Under thesecircumstances it was very difficult, if indeed it were possible, to findout the true merits of a case.

  Every day a battle raged, and frequently an opponent was allowed neitherlearning nor knowledge, while occasionally he was denied common honestyand even decency. The gentlemen of the Buccaneer's press were a mightypower. Fall under their displeasure, and it would be wise to make peacewith your enemy quickly, or you would have a whole phalanx of quillscharged to the very tips with ink, levelled at you. Kings even werecensured and nations chided in the most patronising manner; beingoccasionally set at each other's throats, causes for quarrel being foundwhen none really existed. And often where a sore existed between twopeople, it was not allowed quietly to heal and sink into the regions offorgetfulness, but was kept open until perchance it ended in an openrupture. Then having done this, the press frequently sat in judgmentupon the belligerents and censured them for their blood-guiltiness; andby persisting in being present at the row, and chronicling the actionsof each combatant, the gentlemen of the press frequently didconsiderable damage to both.

  As information could not possibly be legitimately acquired to keep somany papers going it had to be manufactured. Then when a false rumourwas started, there was soon a hue and cry after it, and it was eitherrun to earth, or caught and worried to death in the open. Although thedailies gave themselves great airs and many graces, posing often enougheven as prophets, they were a mighty power for good. They oftenredressed wrongs; brought abuses to light, and kept a rod in pickle forthe back of the evil doer. The press was not, however, without itsinconveniences, and even evils. Taking a page out of Jonathan's book,the Buccaneer had allowed the system of interviewing celebrities tocreep in. Distinguished persons were considered to be fair game, andthey were badgered, and bored to disclose their inmost secrets. Whatthey had had for breakfast, how they conducted themselves in privatelife, whether they ate, drank, slept and dressed as other people, orwhether they had any peculiar way of their own, was considered to be ofthe utmost interest to the people. The method by which we conduct oureveryday life is somewhat confined. We can only sit in one way, which wemay perhaps slightly vary; but the centre of gravity must be kept withincertain small limits. As a rule, there is but one mode of getting intobed, namely, on either one side or the other, though we have known casesin which the individual preferred to crawl in at the foot.

  Amongst other inconveniences must be named the newsvendor, who everyday, and at all hours up to late at night, rushed through the street andcried up his wares in tones perfectly unintelligible, and which rangedfrom the shrill pipe of the tender-aged gutter-grub, to the deepgin-and-water voice of the full-grown and matured drunkard.

  High above the heads of the rest of the dailies stood the GreatThunderer, as it was called. Every day it belched out dense heavycolumns from its paper throat, and it ploughed in amongst the smallerfry and did occasionally great damage, this big gun worked upon a pivot,and by the direction of its smoke you could tell which way the wind ofpublic opinion was likely to blow.

  Once a week the weeklies sat in judgment upon the dailies. Themonthlies pitched into both of these, and four times a year the giantquarterlies strode in amongst the combatants, and dealt destruction allround; overcoming all obstacles by the sheer weight of their columns. Itwas said that one of these big bullies killed a man once, but this isone of those assertions that requires confirmation. What one paperaffirmed, another denied, and that which to begin with was tolerablyclear, soon became overclouded with prejudice and party feeling.