What he liked, and as a journalist was quite right to
like, was definiteness. Qualifying words were an abomination to his
strong imagination. No man ever loved the dramatic side of life more
than he did. He even carried this love of drama to the lengths of
honestly being inclined to believe things simply and solely because they
were sensational. The ordinary man when he hears an extraordinary tale
is inclined to say, "What rubbish! That can't be true. I never heard
anything like that before," and so on. Townsend, on the other hand, was
like the Father of the Church who said, _"Credo quia impossibile."_
If you told Townsend a strange story, and suggested that it could not
possibly be true because of some marvellous or absurd incident which was
supposed to have occurred, his natural and immediate impulse was to look
upon that special circumstance as conclusive proof of its credibility
and truth. His extraordinarily wide, if inaccurate, recollections of
historical facts and fictions would supply him with a hundred
illustrations to show that what seemed to you ridiculous, or, at any
rate, inexplicable, was the simplest and most reasonable thing in the
world. This leaning toward the sensational, which belongs to so many
journalists and is probably a beneficial part of their equipment, should
not be forgotten by those who are tempted to judge the Press harshly in
the matter of scare headlines and scare news.
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