The Sea Vanishes Magically And Before His Entranced
Vision He Sees The One Town, Full Of Regular Fellows And Real
People.
Somebody is going to have fried ham for supper - five
thousand miles away he sniffs the delectable perfume of
That fried
ham as it seeps through a crack in the kitchen window and wafts
out into the street - and the word passes round that there is going
to be a social session down at the lodge to-night, followed, mayhap,
by a small sociable game of quarter-limit upstairs over Corbett's
drug-store. At this point, our traveler rummages his Elks' button
out of his trunk and gives it an affectionate polishing with a
silk handkerchief. And oh, how he does long for a look at a home
newspaper - packed with wrecks and police news and municipal
scandals and items about the persons one knows, and chatty mention
concerning Congressmen and gunmen and tango teachers and other
public characters.
Thinking it all over here in the quiet and privacy of the empty
sea, he realizes that his evening paper is the thing he has missed
most. To the American understanding foreign papers seem fearfully
and wonderfully made. For instance, German newspapers are much
addicted to printing their more important news stories in cipher
form. The German treatment of a suspected crime for which no
arrests have yet been made, reminds one of the jokes which used
to appear, a few years ago, in the back part of Harper's Magazine,
where a good story was always being related of Bishop X, residing
in the town of Y, who, calling one afternoon upon Judge Z, said
to Master Egbert, the pet of the household, age four, and so on.
A German newspaper will daringly state that Banker - - , president
of the Bank of - - at - - who is suspected of sequestering the
funds of that institution to his own uses is reported to have
departed by stealth for the city of - - , taking with him the wife
of Herr - - .
And such is the high personal honor of the average Parisian news
gatherer that one Paris morning paper, which specializes in actual
news as counterdistinguished from the other Paris papers which
rely upon political screeds to fill their columns, locks its doors
and disconnects its telephones at 8 o'clock in the evening, so
that reporters coming in after that hour must stay in till press
time lest some of them - such is the fear - will peddle all the
exclusive stories off to less enterprising contemporaries.
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