I made my base at the best hotel in the city and proceeded to pump everyone in sight as to the news of the hour in the Crimean port. Four hours of active work convinced me that the situation in Sevastopol had been vastly exaggerated, as indeed is usually the case with war or riot stories originating in remote localities. To the excited citizen caught in the hurly burly uproar and tumult of a mob, with shots ringing out and Cossacks charging about and riding people down, it no doubt seems as though the last great spasm of history were being enacted. A dozen killed and a score wounded look like hundreds to the man who has not seen corpses and wounded “in bulk.” In fact, there is nothing in the world so misleading as the importance of riots and the alleged losses. When one comes to analyze it, half the supposed dead prove to be only wounded or stunned, while the bulk of the alleged fatally wounded are only slightly hurt, or so badly frightened that they fall over each other in their anxiety to get away. All this to the amateur observer looks like a world sensation, but if one digests it all a day or two later, when the excitement has subsided, it appears that the police have merely dispersed a disorderly rabble with a few casualties. In the meantime, however, the excited witness, who perchance has never heard a shot fired in anger before, has sent out his story of “atrocious massacre by the police” with all the lurid details which, in his mind, are unparalleled. The story does not lose as it travels through the big centers of news distribution, and when it finally gets into the daily papers it gives the reader the impression that a world spasm has been enacted. The “special correspondent” is rushed to the scene of the occurrence, and when he arrives a week afterwards he finds the life of the town moving much as before, and a few bullet holes in some wall the only visible signs of the “horrible riot.” He learns that the revolutionists are in durance vile, and if he takes the pains to investigate, he will find a few poor peasants and a handful of long-haired, wild-eyed Russian students shut up in a dirty room. This, then, is a type of the great majority of Russian riot or revolution “stories.” In the newspaper world it often happens that “no news” is really important news, though perhaps not sensational. And so it was in Sevastopol at this time. I was able to draft an accurate cable pricking the bubble of mystery and horror with which the outside world was then viewing the Sevastopol situation.