Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 January 1891 — Victimized Reporters. [ARTICLE]

Victimized Reporters.

Among the amusing pranks played by reporters, the practical joke played on his colleagues by Peter Finnerty, the oldtime Parliamentary reporter, remains one of the best on record. The special victim in this case was a reporter named Morgan O’Sullivan who, feeling too drowsy during a dull debate to keep his eyes open, asked Finnerty to supply him with any important speeches made during his nap, and then went to sleep. When he awoke, Finnerty gravely informed him that during his nap there had been an important speech delivered by Mr. Wilberforce on the virtues of the Irish potato. Morgan, never pausing to think that the subject had a suggestion of the ludicrous, wou'd not be pacified until the speech had been dictated to him by Finnerty. The speech, entirely Finnerty’s concoction, made Wilberforce say: “Had It been my lot to be born and reared iir Ireland, whsre my food would have principally consisted of the potato —the most nutritious and salubrious root—instead of being the poor, infirm, stunted creature you, sir, and honorable gentlemen, now behold me, I should have been a tall, stout, athletic man; and able to carry an enormous weight. I hold that root to be invaluable, and the man who first cultivated it in Ireland I regard as a benefactor of the first magnitude to his country.” Morgan took all this in, and so delighted was he with the speech that he gave it to his colleagues, with the result that next morning every paper of note (except Flnnerty’s paper, the Morning Chronicle ) had this amazing report of Wilberforce’B great speech on the potato.