We should bear in mind that, in general, it is the
      object of our newspapers rather to create a sensation—to make a
      point—than to further the cause of truth. The latter end is only
      pursued when it seems coincident with the former. The print which
      merely falls in with ordinary opinion (however well founded this
      opinion may be) earns for itself no credit with the mob. The mass
      of the people regard as profound only him who suggests _pungent
      contradictions_ of the general idea. In ratiocination, not less
      than in literature, it is the epigram which is the most
      immediately and the most universally appreciated. In both, it is
      of the lowest order of merit. “What I mean to say is, that it is the mingled epigram and
      melodrame of the idea, that Marie Rogêt still lives, rather than
      any true plausibility in this idea, which have suggested it to
      L’Etoile, and secured it a favorable reception with the public. Let us examine the heads of this journal’s argument; endeavoring
      to avoid the incoherence with which it is originally set forth. “The first aim of the writer is to show, from the brevity of the
      interval between Marie’s disappearance and the finding of the
      floating corpse, that this corpse cannot be that of Marie. The
      reduction of this interval to its smallest possible dimension,
      becomes thus, at once, an object with the reasoner. In the rash
      pursuit of this object, he rushes into mere assumption at the
      outset. ‘It is folly to suppose,’ he says, ‘that the murder, if
      murder was committed on her body, could have been consummated
      soon enough to have enabled her murderers to throw the body into
      the river before midnight.’ We demand at once, and very
      naturally, why? Why is it folly to suppose that the murder was
      committed _within five minutes_ after the girl’s quitting her
      mother’s house? Why is it folly to suppose that the murder was
      committed at any given period of the day? There have been
      assassinations at all hours. But, had the murder taken place at
      any moment between nine o’clock in the morning of Sunday, and a
      quarter before midnight, there would still have been time enough
      ‘to throw the body into the river before midnight.’ This
      assumption, then, amounts precisely to this—that the murder was
      not committed on Sunday at all—and, if we allow L’Etoile to
      assume this, we may permit it any liberties whatever. The
      paragraph beginning ‘It is folly to suppose that the murder,
      etc.,’ however it appears as printed in L’Etoile, may be imagined
      to have existed actually thus in the brain of its inditer—‘It is
      folly to suppose that the murder, if murder was committed on the
      body, could have been committed soon enough to have enabled her
      murderers to throw the body into the river before midnight; it is
      folly, we say, to suppose all this, and to suppose at the same
      time, (as we are resolved to suppose,) that the body was not
      thrown in until after midnight’—a sentence sufficiently
      inconsequential in itself, but not so utterly preposterous as the
      one printed. “Were it my purpose,” continued Dupin, “merely to _make out a
      case_ against this passage of L’Etoile’s argument, I might safely
      leave it where it is. It is not, however, with L’Etoile that we
      have to do, but with the truth. The sentence in question has but
      one meaning, as it stands; and this meaning I have fairly stated;
      but it is material that we go behind the mere words, for an idea
      which these words have obviously intended, and failed to convey. It was the design of the journalist to say that, at whatever
      period of the day or night of Sunday this murder was committed,
      it was improbable that the assassins would have ventured to bear
      the corpse to the river before midnight. And herein lies, really,
      the assumption of which I complain. It is assumed that the murder
      was committed at such a position, and under such circumstances,
      that the bearing it to the river became necessary. Now, the
      assassination might have taken place upon the river’s brink, or
      on the river itself; and, thus, the throwing the corpse in the
      water might have been resorted to, at any period of the day or
      night, as the most obvious and most immediate mode of disposal. You will understand that I suggest nothing here as probable, or
      as cöincident with my own opinion. My design, so far, has no
      reference to the facts of the case. I wish merely to caution you
      against the whole tone of L’Etoile’s suggestion, by calling your
      attention to its ex parte character at the outset. “Having prescribed thus a limit to suit its own preconceived
      notions; having assumed that, if this were the body of Marie, it
      could have been in the water but a very brief time, the journal
      goes on to say:

      ‘All experience has shown that drowned bodies, or bodies thrown
      into the water immediately after death by violence, require from
      six to ten days for sufficient decomposition to take place to
      bring them to the top of the water. Even when a cannon is fired
      over a corpse, and it rises before at least five or six days’
      immersion, it sinks again if let alone.’

      “These assertions have been tacitly received by every paper in
      Paris, with the exception of Le Moniteur. (*15) This latter print
      endeavors to combat that portion of the paragraph which has
      reference to ‘drowned bodies’ only, by citing some five or six
      instances in which the bodies of individuals known to be drowned
      were found floating after the lapse of less time than is insisted
      upon by L’Etoile. But there is something excessively
      unphilosophical in the attempt on the part of Le Moniteur, to
      rebut the general assertion of L’Etoile, by a citation of
      particular instances militating against that assertion. Had it
      been possible to adduce fifty instead of five examples of bodies
      found floating at the end of two or three days, these fifty
      examples could still have been properly regarded only as
      exceptions to L’Etoile’s rule, until such time as the rule itself
      should be confuted. Admitting the rule, (and this Le Moniteur
      does not deny, insisting merely upon its exceptions,) the
      argument of L’Etoile is suffered to remain in full force; for
      this argument does not pretend to involve more than a question of
      the probability of the body having risen to the surface in less
      than three days; and this probability will be in favor of
      L’Etoile’s position until the instances so childishly adduced
      shall be sufficient in number to establish an antagonistical
      rule.