Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/230

 bad taste, according to the political opinions of the men who paid the writers' salaries. The New York correspondents for Western cities and Western news agencies were flashing the story out to the sections beyond the immediate reach of the fast newspaper trains. But it did not stop there.

The American correspondents for foreign newspapers and news agencies had raised their eyebrows as soon as they saw the headline. Immediately they began sending deep down under the many miles of waves and water brief accounts of the holiday doings of Hammie Knox, who sat out on the string-piece of the dock, idly kicking his legs and wishing something would happen.

It will not take long to tell what happened. First the Madrid papers pounced upon it, then the other important Spanish papers published it with exclamation marks, and cabled to London clamoring for more, the Impartial meanwhile writing an inflamed editorial about Yankee pigs, which ran sputtering and exploding like a string of fire-crackers out through the provinces. Spread heads popped out in the morning, like mushrooms,