VII. The Newsmonger

Newsmaking is the concoction of false stories of what people say and do, at the gossip’s caprice. The newsmonger is one who straightway strikes an attitude and assumes a smiling air when he meets a friend, and asks: “Where have you been? What news? How is the situation? Have you any fresh word about it?” and then going straight on, he asks: “Is there no later report? Well! the current rumors are good.”

And without letting his friend reply, he keeps right on: “What! you haven’t heard a word about it! Then I think I have a feast of news for you.” He always has in readiness some unheard-of soldier or a slave belonging to one Asteus, a piper, or Lycon, an obscure contractor, just back from the battle-field; and it is from one of these that he has heard the tidings. The authorities for his reports are of the sort that you can never get hold of. Such are the men he quotes when he tells how Polyperchon and the king carried the day and Cassander was taken prisoner.

If anybody asks: “Do you believe this?” he replies, “Why the story is noised all about the city, is constantly gaining ground, and the whole population is of one mind; everybody is agreed about the battle; it must have been a regular Death’s feast.” He reads a proof of it too in the faces of men in authority; for they all wear a changed look. He says he overheard that a man had come from Macedonia who knows the whole history of the battle, and that he has been concealed now five days in a house with the authorities. There is a convincing pathos in his voice—you can imagine it!—as he tells his story and exclaims: “Luckless Cassander! ill-starred hero! Lo! the fickleness of fortune! Vain it was that he rose to power. But what I say is strictly between ourselves.” Then he trips off and repeats the story to every man in town.