At that point his wonderfully alert mind turned to another thought.
"Suppose you and I believed in the occult, the mystical, the so-called supernatural, as we don't," he said, "what a mystery we might make of this in the way of psychical manifestation--which usually belongs to the domain of psycho-pathology. Think of it! As I chastised myself in my own mind for my neglect to put these things on paper, your mind came under subjection to mine and you wrote them in my stead. So complete was the possession that your handwriting, which is clear and legible, became an exact facsimile of mine, which is obscure and difficult. Then you, being under possession, preserved no memory of having written the thing, while I, knowing nothing of your unconscious agency in the matter, had nothing to remember concerning it. Isn't that about the way the mysticists make up their 'facts' for the misleading of half-baked brains?"
In later years I related this incident to a distinguished half-believer in things mystical, adding Mr. Godwin's laughingly conjectural explanation of it, whereupon the reply came:
"May not that have been the real explanation, in spite of your own and Mr. Godwin's skepticism?"
I was left with the feeling that after all what Mr. Godwin had intended as an extravagant caricature was a veritable representation of a credulity that actually exists, even among men commonly accounted sane, and certainly learned. The reflection was discouraging to one who hopes for the progress of mankind through sanity of mind.
In the days of which I have hitherto written there was a dignity, reserve, contentment--call it what you will--in the conduct of newspapers of established reputation. There was rivalry among them in their endeavors to publish the earliest news of public events, but it was a dignified rivalry involving comparatively little of that self-glorification which has since come to be a double-leaded feature in the conduct of many newspapers. The era of illustration and exploitation by the use of pictures had not yet been born of cheapened reproductive processes. Newspapers were usually printed directly from type because stereotyping was then a costly process and a slow one. As a consequence, newspapers were printed in regular columns consecutively arranged, and articles begun in one column were carried forward in the next. There were no such legends as "continued on page five," and the like.