If my special "editor's" duties were thus light, I made up, however, for their deficiency, by enlarging upon the skeleton telegrams that came every night across the ocean--"expanding news," so to speak--and by also writing, on the arrival of every steamer, while seated in the back parlour of the journal's office in New York, the most graphic special correspondent's letters from Paris and London! With regard to the telegrams.

Half a dozen words only might come over the cable, to say, for instance, that the late Emperor Napoleon, who was the then supposed arbiter of the Old World, had nominated Count somebody or General that to a fresh portfolio; or that, the "scion of the house of Hapsburgh" was suffering from tooth-ache; or that, John Bright was going to Dublin to lecture "on Irish affairs." My duties were such, that, when these telegrams appeared, in all the glories of print, the next morning, they had grown in such a miraculous way, that they took up half a yard of room, instead of but a few lines of type.

Had you read them, you would have found their contents thoroughly explanatory, entering into the most minute details--as to how Napoleon's change of ministers would affect "the situation;" how poor Francis Joseph's attack of caries might, could and would raise again the ghost of "the Eastern question;" how the advent of the great Radical leader in Ireland would be the signal for a general Fenian uprising-- and, so on.
I _only_ mention these cases in point, to describe the way in which I clothed my skeletons with solid substrata of flesh and blood.

The public, you see, had only so much the more information for their money-- which was, probably, just as reliable as if it had been really "wired" under the Atlantic! Nobody was the wiser; nobody, the sufferer by the deception; so, what was "the odds" so long as they were correspondingly "happy"-- in their ignorance?
My correspondent's letters were much more mendacious compositions.
I am quite ashamed to tell you what long columns of flagrant description I was in the habit of reeling off--touching certain races in the Bois de Boulogne, soirees at the Tuileries, and working-men's "demonstrations" in Hyde Park--of which I was only an imaginative spectator! I used to rake up all my old reminiscences of the boulevards and cafes and prados, giving details concerning the "petit-creves" and "cocottes," the "flaneurs" and "grandes dames" of the once "gay" capital--gay no longer; and, interspersing them with veracious reports respecting the latest hidden thoughts of "Badinguet," and vivid descriptions of the respective toilets of the Empress Eugenie, Baroness de B---, Madame la Comtesse C---, la belle Marquise d'E---, and all the other fashionable letters of the alphabet--chronicling the very latest achievements in "Robes en train" and "Costumes a ravir" of the great artist Worth.

Even the men folk of America--"shoddy" of course--dote on those accounts of European toilets, which we never see given in any of our papers, excepting where the appearance of the Queen's Drawing-Room may be passingly noted; or, when the _Morning Post_ exhausts itself over a "marriage in high life." When my spurious intelligence was dated from London, I had to draw on a fertile memory for popular rumours concerning revolutionary doctrine, and express a conviction that things were not going very well with John Bull, politically or socially, hinting, also, at the prospect of an early Irish rebellion--and, generally, manufacture similar "news" of a kind that is peculiarly grateful to the jaundiced palates of our English-hating, jealousy-mad cousins over the way.
When Min came to know of this practice of mine, she did not like it.
She wrote to me to say that it was acting untruthfully to pretend to correspond from a place when I was not actually there.
The habit was certainly reprehensible, I admit, as I admitted to her; but, then, what can a writer do if blessed with a vivid imagination?
Besides, I had a precedent in Goldsmith's _Citizen of the World_, you know; and, as Byron says-- "-- After all, what is a lie?
'Tis but The truth in masquerade; and I defy Historians, heroes, lawyers, priests, to put A fact without some leaven of a lie.
The very shadow of true truth would shut Up annals, revelations, poesy, And prophecy--except it should be dated Some years before the incidents related." Even on this side of the water, too, authors have frequently to use their pens as if they did not chance to possess a conscience--one of the worst possessions for any aspirant in the journalistic profession to be encumbered with, I may remark by the way! You seem to be astonished at my observation?
I will explain what I mean more lucidly.
Supposing a journalist belongs to a Conservative organ, he must back up the party, don't you see, at all hazards; and, although in his inmost heart he may have a faint suspicion that Mr Disraeli's popularity is on the wane, it will not do for him to write his leading articles to that effect exactly, eh?
Oh, dear no! He has to assert, on the contrary, that "the masses" are loudly calling on _Punch's_ friend "Dizzy" to save England from the utter extinguishment predicted by our dear Bismarck the other day at Versailles! While, should your potent pressman, on the other hand, wield the goose-quill of any ponderous or lively daily paper that may advocate "Liberalism," and support the elect of Greenwich through thick and thin, do you think he gives you his candid opinion anent "the people's William" then in power, or respecting that bamboozling Alabama business?
Not he! Why, he knows, as well as you do, of the tergiversation that has distinguished the entire political career of the Risque-tout Prime Minister; and yet, he has to speak of him as if he were the greatest statesman England has ever seen--hanging on his words as silver, when knowing them all the while to be but clap-trap Dutch metal! Convinced, as he must be, that the Washington Treaty is one of the trashiest pieces of diplomacy that has ever disgraced a government, and that the whole community has been dissatisfied at having to make the Americans a nice little present of three millions of money--in settlement of a claim for which neither the law of nations nor moral opinion held us responsible-- he is obliged to argue that it is "a splendid triumph for the ministry," and that the "public is overjoyed" to grease Uncle Sam's outstretched palm! You know, the deeds of "our William" _must be_ bolstered up; lest "waverers" should waver off to the ranks of the "Constitutionalists," and the "great Liberal party" come to grief at the next general election! So, how can a journalist have a conscience?
You see I'm right, and that I had some excuse for my foreign correspondence of American origin.
I lay the whole blame of the transaction, however, on the narrow shoulders of my lanky "down-east" proprietor:--_he_ is the man to blame in the matter, not I! After a time, I got tired of this work.