Little Exaggeration.
The man with the vivid imagination, who does the fanciful in the New York
Herald under the head of "Situation" has wonderfully descended from the eagle flight he soared to a few days ago. It was first announced that the "splendid Union victory of
Seven Pines" resulted in the capture of fifteen hundred prisoners, and among them the whole of the 8th Alabama regiment.
The
Herald gave full biographical sketches of the field officers, one, at least, thus honored, never having belonged to the regiment, and who was at the time of the battle very quietly residing in
Montgomery.
In the list of prisoners we find some half a dozen names of prisoners belonging to the 8th.
Instead of 4,500 the
Herald now gives the number at 280.
The list of their killed and wounded has reached forty-eight hundred, and the "Union victory" is spoken of in doubtful terms.
No mention is made of the capture of
Price and his army, nor of the late disaster to
General Beauregard--hence we may conclude, until better evidence is brought out, that
Halleck's dispatches to the War Department at
Washington was an unqualified lie, and on a par with those pleasant little fictions he wrote about
Shiloh and
Island No.10. One admirable point about the
Herald is, that it never contradicts, but allows its Manichaean tales to go on from day to days as if the whole country believed them.--Its audacity is perfectly refreshing.
Illustrative of the gullibility of the
Yankees, we have dim recollections of the "moon hoax," many years ago, which made the reputation of the
sun newspaper, then struggling for an existence, and caused the whole country to stand
erectis auribus at the newly-discovered wonders.
But if that famous canard beats the recent stories of the
Herald, or makes a larger draft upon the credulity of the people, it is not evident from our point of view. --
Bennett should republish a file of his paper as a second volume of "
Gulliver's Travels," or incorporate his "Situation." articles into a book of fancy tales.
