On Wednesday the "special correspondents" of the penny Press received
a more than usually instructive lesson in their art. The Daily Telegraph, had a " special " reporter at the examination before the Cuckfield Magistrates, in relation to the charge against Lefroy, alias Mapleton. And that special re- porter had a very special knowledge of his calling. This is how he throws off :—" One warm day in Calcutta, the Prince of Wales and suite stood in a small room, interesting spectators of a striking scene. A cobra that had bitten a dog and killed it almost instantaneously was wandering about the floor, defiant in air, reckless in bearing, to all appearance caring for nothing, when suddenly a visible change; came over its conduct. No blow had been struck at it, no weapon hurled at it, and yet in an instant it was cowering and almost shivering—regarding a something which so far was visible to scarce any one or any- thing but the snake. That something was much more harmless in look than the snake itself; it was only a quiet, ferret-like creature, interested for the moment in matters quite foreign to the snake, which was now crouching in the corner. Yet to the cobra, venomous, deadly as it was, the look of that mongoose was as the sight of death, for its instinct told it that the quiet rodent would presently clasp it in a:deadly embrace, and it was for this the mongoose had been brought." Need we explain that the cobra is symbolic of the man charged with the murder, that "the mongoose" is poor Mr. Poland, and that the great Indian scene is supposed to have been suggested by Lefroy's turning nervous under the sense of Mr. Poland's presence P This is very hard indeed on Mr. Poland. There is excuse, not to say justification, for striking dread into the cobra through the mongoose; but is there any for the cruelty of terrify- ing the mongoose himself into collapse, by a description like this?
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