Wheeling Sunday Register

A 'WILD MAN-SNAKE' STORY
The newspaper liar is a strange animal. His tracks are everywhere and he is very numerous, yet he has never been captured and laid on the dissecting table for the benefit of science and the public generally. Yet no bacillus, no one member of the animal kingdom, in fact, has a greater effect upon the affairs of men. Sometimes this effect is harmless, sometimes it is evil. For instance, when he excites the public mind with a well 'authenticated' account of a 75-foot snake seen in some remote part of the country, he is simply amusing and harmless. When he devotes his attention to men and their affairs his influence is usually baleful. The late Gen. Sherman said in his last speech that if he had hung a half dozen newspaper correspondents, the war would have been over two years sooner.

A fine specimen of the newspaper liar in his harmless mood is the correspondent of our esteemed neighbor, the Intelligencer, who wrote from Kingwood a startling account of a 'wild man-snake,' captured in that locality. The hair-raising tale was, of course, 'well authenticated' by numerous 'unimpeachable' witnesses, and was far from exaggerating the facts, the correspondent actually toned down the reality. This monstrosity was captured and brought to the County Infirmary—though why the Infirmary was selected as its place of confinement was not explained. Probably the Intelligencer man told the poor thing a yarn and reduced it to a state of imbecile infirmity. The explanation, however, comes later and is made by the Kingwood Argus. The Argus is mad. It begins by calling attention to a former horrible tale published by the Intelligencer about the finding of human bones by workmen who were digging up what was the foundation of an old hotel. The inference left was that these were the bones of persons who had been murdered and thus disposed of during the days when the spot was covered by a hotel. The Argus indignantly calls attention to the fact that the bones were beef bones. This, says our indignant Kingwood contemporary, is now followed by the publication in the Intelligencer of a double-headed and frightful—hair-raising—blood-curdling—chill-creeping-up-your-back account of 'An Awful Monstrosity in the Shape of a Wild Man-Snake in Preston county' captured and brought to the County Infirmary.' And it proceeds to explain that the 'wild man-snake' that was alleged to have been roaming the wilds of Preston county is a poor deaf-and-dumb idiot confined in the Infirmary, named Charles Hillery, who, far from having the serpent-wisdom a 'man-snake' ought to possess, has no wisdom at all, and shows no sign, either mental or physical, of anything snaky. The Intelligencer's tale, however, was fishy enough to be of the sea-serpent variety.