It is rather important
to understand the technique of rumors. The wise man does not scoff at them, for
while they are often absurd, they are rarely baseless. People do not go about
inventing rumors, except for purposes of hoax; and even a practical joke is
never (to parody the proverb) hoax et præterea nihil. There is always a reason
for wanting to perpetrate the hoax, or a reason for believing it will be
believed. Rumors are a kind of
exhalation or intellectual perfume thrown off by the news of the day. Some
events are more aromatic than others; they can be detected by the trained
pointer long before they happen. When things are going on that have a strong
vibration—what foreign correspondents love to call a “repercussion”—they cause
a good deal of mind-quaking. An event getting ready to happen is one of the
most interesting things to watch. By a sort of mental radiation it fills men’s
minds with surmises and conjectures. Curiously enough, due perhaps to the
innate perversity of man, most of the rumors suggest the exact opposite of what
is going to happen. Coming events cast
their rumors before. From a careful study of rumors the discerning may learn a
good deal, providing always that they never take them at face value but try to
read beneath the surface. People sometimes criticize the newspapers for printing
rumors, but it is an essential part of their function to do so, provided they
plainly mark them as such. Shakespeare speaks of rumors as “stuffing the ears
of men with false reports,” yet if so this is not the fault of the rumor
itself, but of the too credible listener. The prosperity of a rumor is in the
ear that hears it. The sagacious listener will take the trouble to sift and
winnow his rumors, set them in perspective with what he knows of the facts and
from them he will then deduce exceedingly valuable considerations. Rumor is the
living atmosphere of men’s minds, the most fascinating and significant problem
with which we have to deal. The Fact, the Truth, may shine like the sun, but
after all it is the clouds that make the sunset beautiful. Keep your eye on the
rumors, for a sufficient number of rumors can compel an event to happen, even
against its will. No one can set down
any hard and fast rules for reading the rumors. The process is partly
instinctive and partly the result of trained observation. It is as complicated
as the calculation by which a woman tells time by her watch which she knows to
be wrong—she adds seventeen minutes, subtracts three, divides by two and then
looks at the church steeple. It is as exhilarating as trying to deduce what
there is going to be for supper by the pervasive fragrance of onions in the
front hall. And sometimes a very small event, like a very small onion, can cast
its rumors a long way. Destiny is unlike the hen in that she cackles before she
lays the egg. Be hospitable to rumors, for however grotesque they are, they always have some reason for existence. The Sixth Sense is the sense of news, the sense that something is going to happen. And just as every orchestra utters queer and discordant sounds while it is tuning up its instruments, so does the great orchestra of Human Events (in other words, The News) offer shrill and perhaps misleading notes before the conductor waves his baton and leads off the concerted crash of Truth. |
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