when uttering a falsehood of more than ordinary dimensions.

Irresponsible rumours had been floating about (the official proclamation
began) to the effect that there had been an explosion in the Treasury
at Vienna. It had been stated that a large quantity of gold had been
stolen, and that a disaster of some kind had occurred in the Treasury
vaults. Then a ridiculous story had been printed which asserted that
Professor Seigfried, one of Austria's honoured dead, had in some manner
that savoured of the Black Art, encompassed this wholesale destruction.
The Government now begged to make the following declarations: First,
not a penny had been stolen out of the Treasury; second, the so-called
war-chest was intact; third, the two hundred million florins reposed
securely within the bolted doors of the Treasury vaults; fourth,
the coins were not, as had been alleged, those belonging to various
countries, which was a covert intimation that Austria had hostile intent
against one or the other of those friendly nations. The whole coinage
in this falsely named war-chest, which was not a war-chest at all, but
merely the receptacle of a reserve fund which Austria possessed, was
entirely in Austrian coinage; fifth, in order that these sensational and
disquieting scandals should be set at rest, the Government announced
that it intended to weigh this gold upon a certain date, and it invited
representatives of the Press, from Russia, Germany, France, and England
to witness this weighing.

The day after this troy-weight function had taken place in Vienna, long
telegraphic accounts of it appeared in the English press, and several
solemn leading articles were put forward in the editorial columns,
which, without mentioning the name of the _Daily Bugle_, deplored the
voracity of the sensational editor, who respected neither the amity
which should exist between friendly nations, nor the good name of the
honoured and respected dead, in his wolfish hunt for the daily scandal.
Nothing was too high-spiced or improbable for him to print. He traded on
the supposed gullibility of a fickle public. But, fortunately, in the
long run, these staid sheets asserted, such actions recoiled upon the
head of him who promulgated them. Sensational journals merited and
received the scathing contempt of all honest men. Later on, one of the
reviews had an article entitled "Some Aspects of Modern Journalism,"
which battered in the head of the _Daily Bugle_ as with a sl