Journalism 101-part FIVE

Chesterton:
"And now I will tell you exactly what really happened. It is honestly
rather amusing; it is a story of what journals and journalists really
are.

A monstrously lazy man lives in South Bucks partly by writing a
column in the Saturday Daily News. At the time he usually
writes it (which is always at the last moment) his house is
unexpectedly invaded by infants of all shapes and sizes.

His secretary is called away; and he has to cope with the invading pigmies. Playing
with children is a glorious thing; but the journalist in question has
never understood why it was considered a soothing or idyllic one. It
reminds him, not of watering little budding flowers, but of wrestling
for hours with gigantic angels and devils.

Moral problems of the most monstrous complexity besiege him incessantly. He has to decide
before the awful eyes of innocence, whether, when a sister has
knocked down a brother's bricks, in revenge for the brother
having taken two sweets out of his turn, it is endurable that the
brother should retaliate by scribbling on the sister's picture-book, and
whether such conduct does not justify the sister in blowing out the
brother's unlawfully lighted match."

I love this section! I could write columns like this, too....she took the gymnastics mat away and is using it for a fort! Well SHE said she'd play cards with me and now she won't. Well that's because we were playing chess, and she stopped in the middle because she saw I was winning! I did that because you looked at me like you knew you were going to win. Well, I was! Yeah, but you didn't have to look at me that way.....and on and on....