of each paper as a
guarantee of enterprise if not of good faith. On practical enterprise
of this kind does journalism forge ahead. Some people who have been
bred up in a conservative atmosphere sneer at such journalistic
enterprise. They affect to regard as unreliable the up-to-date news
contained in newspapers which are unable to tell the truth about the
hands of the clock.

From the cries of the news-boys and from the announcements on the
newspaper bills which they displayed, it was assumed by those with a
greedy appetite for sensations that a judge of the High Court had been
murdered on the bench. Such an appetite easily swallowed the difficulty
created by the fact that the Law Courts had been closed for the long
vacation. In imagination they saw a dramatic scene in court--the
disappointed demented desperate litigant suddenly drawing a revolver and
with unerring aim shooting the judge through the brain before the deadly
weapon could be wrenched from his hands. But though the sensation created
by the murder of a judge of the High Court was destined to grow and to be
fed by unexpected developments, the changing phases of which monopolised
public attention throughout England on successive occasions, there was
little in the evening papers to satisfy the appetite for sensation. In
journalistic vernacular "they were late in getting on to it," and
therefore their reference to the crime occupied only a few lines in the
"stop press news," beneath some late horse-racing results. The _Evening
Courier,_ which was first in the streets with the news, made its
announcement of the crime in the following brief paragraph:

"The dead body of Sir Horace Fewbanks, the distinguished High Court
judge, was found by the police at his home, Riversbrook in Tanton
Gardens, Hampstead, to-day. Deceased had been shot through the heart. The
police have no doubt that he was murdered."

But the morning papers of the following day did full justice to the
sensation. It was the month of August when Parliament is "up," the Law
Courts closed for the long vacation, and when everybody who is anybody is
out of London for the summer holidays. News was scarce and the papers
vied with one another in making the utmost of the murder of a High Court
judge. Each of the morning papers sent out a man to Hampstead soon after
the news of the crime reached their offices in the afternoon, and some of
the more enterprising sent two or three men. Scotland Yard and
River