Stupid Headline

News, like art, has never been adequately defined. Some understand it as the graphic record of a current event which is 1) unusual or 2) important. If a corporation president resigns his directorships to accept a job as bus boy, if a senator refuses to make a speech at a public dinner, if a revenue agent stops the sale of liquor -- that is news. Such news may be presented in as entertaining a fashion as possible. But there is another kind of news -- a narrative of events which have often occurred but must be recorded as a matter of form, with dignity and brevity. To this category belongs the item about the Prince of Wales falling off his horse. It has appeared in the press 15 times in the last five years, and the first ten times it ceased to be a joke. The public expects this story to be treated literally, tersely, like the report of a drop in the temperature or a tumble in stocks -- PRINCE HAS QUICK FALL YESTERDAY or SHARP DECLINE FOR WALES. But last week the readers of the New York World were amazed to see the familiar item headlined as follows:

THIRD SPILL OF SEASON FOR WALES AS HORSE, OH, DEAR, FALLS DEAD

Quiet ladies took the ejaculation seriously, echoing it with a "Good gracious" or a "Mercy me." Metropolitan wags relapsed into the facetious falsetto with which they retail remarks that appeal to them as effeminate. Honest men stared, read under the headline an article which informed them that "Oh, Dear" was the actual name of the Prince's horse. These men had a curt criticism of the headline writer's awkward and flippant line. "Stupid," they said.