Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 October 1884 — The Laoeoon in Newspaper Prose. [ARTICLE]

The Laoeoon in Newspaper Prose.

Let us imagine a modern newspaper rendering of a certain famous incident of antiquity which the poet and the sculptor have alike admirably dealt with, and compare their work with the reporter's. This is how the latter’s account would probably have run: “Shocking Death of a Father and Two Sons —Yesterday afternoon as our respected fellow-townsman. Mr. ——, was walking on the beach in company with his two sons, youths of 14 and 15 years of age respectively, he was startled by the apparition of two enormous snakes, who, emerging suddenly from the ocean, glided swiftly toward the lads, and proceeded with incredible rapidity to envelop them in their serpentine folds. Horror-stricken at the sight, the father hurried to his sons’ assistance, but only to be himself seized by the scaly monsters in a double coil, one round the middle and the other round the neck, while thei.nheads, towering above their elder victim, presented a most appalling spectacle. The’ unfortunate man, whose clothes and hat were speedily covered with blood and slaver, strove in vain to loosen the folds which encircled him. His cries were terrible, and are compared by witnesses of the scene to the bellowing of a wounded bull. After having been engaged for a few minutes in their work of destruction the monsters retired, when the usual restoratives were at once applied to their victims, but the vital spark was in each nstance extinct.” There you have the prose version of the death of Laoeoon and his sons, and its effect is one of mere disgust and disturbance.— -“H. D. T.,” in American Queen.