The
unhappy vendor of revelations went among his subjects of study for six
weeks, and then set up as an authority. Of course, the acute, sleazy
dogs whom he questioned kept back everything that was essential, and
filled their victim's mind with concoctions which amused professional
blackguards for a month. Could that literary adventurer only have heard
the criticism which daily met my ear, he would have found that many
eager souls were longing for a chance to plunder such an obvious "mug."
Another writer, whose works appear in a morning journal, professes to
make flying visits to various queer places, and his articles are
published as facts; but I had the chance of testing the truth of two
tales which dealt with official business, and I found that these two
were false from end to end. Not only were they false, but they
illustrate nothing, for the writer did not know the conditions of the
life which he pretended to describe, and his fiction misled many
thousands. Experience, then--sordid, miserable, long experience--is
needed before anyone can speak the truth concerning the life of what
Carlyle called "the scoundrel classes.
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