Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3810/Once Upon a Time
The Power of the Press.
Once upon a time there was a quiet respectable little spell-of-hot-weather, with no idea of being a nuisance or doing more than warm people up a bit, and make the summer really feel like summer, and add attraction to seaside resorts. Directly it reached our shores every one began to be happy; and they would have gone on being so but for the sub-editors, who cannot leave well alone but must be for ever finding adjectives for it and teasing it with attentions. Just then they were particularly free to turn their attentions to the kindly visitor, because there was no good murder at the moment, and no divorce case, and no spicy society scandal, and therefore their pages were in need of filling. And seeing the little spell-of-hot-weather they gave way to their passion for labelling everything with crisp terseness—or terse crispness (I forget which)—and called it a "heat wave," and straightway began to give it half the paper, and with huge headings such as, "The Heat-Wave," "Heat-Wave Still Growing," "80 in the Shade," "How to Support such Weather," so that the nice little spell-of-hot-weather was gradually goaded into the desire really to justify this excitement.
"Very well," it said, "I never meant to be more than 80 in the shade and a pleasant interlude in the usual disappointing English June; but since they're determined I'm a nuisance I'll be one. I'll go up to 84."
And it did. It reached 84; and the wise people who like warmth said, "How splendid! If only it would go on like this for ever! Not hotter—just like this."
But the sub-editors were not satisfied. They had got hold of a good thing and they meant to run it for all it was worth. So "Hotter than Ever" they sprawled across their papers, there still being nothing of real public interest to distract them, "Hotter To-morrow," "Heat-Wave Growing," "Terrible Heat."
And now the spell-of-hot-weather was stimulated to be really vicious. "I call Heaven to witness," it said, "that my sole desire was to be genial and beneficial. But what can one do when one is taunted and provoked, abused and nick-named like this? Very well then, I'll go up to 90!"
And it did. The sub-editors were delighted. "Appalling Heat," they wrote, "Tropical England," "Gasping London," "Heat-Wave Breaks all Records," "Hottest Day for Fifty Years," "No Signs of Relief."
And even the people who like warmth began to grumble a little—hypnotised by the Press. But the spell-of-hot-weather had had enough. "I'll go somewhere else, where I'm really welcome and they don't have contents bills," it said, and it crossed the Channel to Paris. It looked back to the English shores, deserted now by the happy paddlers and bathers and baskers of the days before. "I'm sorry to leave you," it said, "but don't blame me." Yet the public did.