Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 April 1886 — Never Quarrel With An Editor. [ARTICLE]

Never Quarrel With An Editor.

My grandfather, writes Labouchere, was on intimate terms with Talleyrand. One day Talleyrand said to him: “I always had thought that you were possessed with a certain amount of sense, but I see that I was in error.” “Why?” asked my grandfather. “Because,” he replied, “I observed in a newspaper this morning that you had contradicted a statement about yourself.” As a rule, anyone who replies to a newspaper on a personal matter is an ass—especially to fact, accompanied by comment. The editor does not like being placed in the wrong, and he generally manages to have the last word. If I saw in a newspaper a statement that I had committed a murder. I doubt whether I should deny it. But if the newspaper were to ask me whether I could prove an alibi, I most certainly should not seek to do so.