Then June came to town, and what had to occur did occur! The Lord Mayor made his speech, the Archdeacon followed suit. A revolution in ideals was blowing up. What was Fleet Street to do? Should the circumstance be made a splash of; or interned in a few facetious paragraphs? What a pity, said they, it had not been kept till the year was in its wilderness!
The facts were too important to be buried and ignored. A Lord Mayor is not original, an Archdeacon not on the heights, for nothing! Editors can do most things; but any attempt on their parts to smother the influence of the fairies is as futile as the broom of Mrs. Partington; it merely demonstrates that they are only human after all.
The banquet and its tendencies had to be reported and commented on, with headlines. So the papers took it up.
Parliament, Gertie Feathergirl, war, actual and diplomatic, with all other matters of passing concern, were compelled to take their proper subordinate places in the daily prints and public interest.
The best of the newspapers, that which you and I support, O reader, began the Press crusade. It gave four columns of description and appeal on its principal page; and this was the heading:
OBERON SHALL BE KING.
And all the while Oberon was in one or other of his castles--in Ireland, in Wales, in Spain, in that dim country where the dreams are made, in Weissnichtwo--living the fairy life, making the birds, flowers, clouds and rivers happier; yet, never for the tithe of an instant, forgetting the madness of June.
The particular newspaper we refuse to have anything to do with, O reader--the newspaper whose opinions we despise and deplore--scoffed at the fairies in its usual cocksure way, as was to be expected! It professed to regard the Lord Mayor's plea as the agreeable sentiment of a well-dined gentleman, and made play with a leaderette in which Titania was called a myth and the fairies fruits of nightmare.
Such conduct on the part of a widely-read journal had to be answered.
June--let it be granted--treated its iconoclastic persiflage with the toleration of contempt. She, too, did not read the newspapers; but Archdeacon Pryde, who recognized that Sir Titus would not condescend to defend himself against such an attack, and remembering that he also was involved in that halfpenny condemnation, called a cab, packed a snuff-box with voice-lozenges, and went with heat and dudgeon to the headquarters of the offending newspaper.