The Room with the Little DoorMolineux, Roland Burnham
General
The Room with the Little Door
Molineux, Roland Burnham
Molineux, Roland Burnham; Prisoners -- New York (State) -- Biography; Prisons -- New York (State)
Take this matter home to yourself; imagine a case in which you are very
much interested. Your house has been entered and all your wife’s jewelry
stolen; you complain to the police. Of course, having done so, the
yellow journals print a full account of the robbery, also more or less
flattering fake portraits of yourself and family. Your bath-room,
through which the burglar entered, is described in detail; your billiard
table, library cuspidor, etc., are photographed and printed life-size in
the evening editions. The next day a portrait of the pretty typewriter
employed at your office is displayed, whom some lynx-eyed reporter has
discovered wearing diamonds. Then everything you _never_ did in your
life is disclosed. The “journalists” take possession of your home; an
old pair of slippers and a bicycle hat of bygone days are discovered.
You stole the jewelry yourself, you know you did! Your hidden sins stand
revealed in all their repulsiveness. The finger of sensational
journalism has torn the mask of hypocrisy, so long and successfully
worn, from your repellant countenance at last. Confess, miserable
wretch! Pictures of Judas Iscariot, Captain Kidd, and others of their
type appear in the hysterical press. They are all labelled with _your_
name. How you will be roasted! “It is said,” etc., that on dark nights
you steal forth to exhume deceased infants from their tombs—and to eat
them. Are you ill-advised enough to deny this? Beware! As for the
partner of your joys and sorrows, “We have it on undeniable authority,”
etc., etc., that she went yachting with that gay club fellow Noah, and
has been engaged to each one of his guests in turn. For a penny, “all
who run may read” these romances; the only redeeming feature being that
those who read do not believe. While this is going on your better half
stays in her room and weeps.
The servants leave, and you have to answer the door-bell yourself and be
polite(?) to the representatives of the press, who call every few
moments for interviews, and who never print a word you say to them.
Every tradesman you deal with sends a collector with his bill; your life
insurance policies are cancelled.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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