The statement that "the demonstration lasted five minutes", or three minutes or twelve minutes is a commonplace of newspaper exaggeration. It is analogous to "the parade of thirty thousand marchers." No parade used to be thought worthy of the name with fewer than thirty thousand in line, until some one in the New York World office made a few calculations as to how long such a procession would be in passing a given point. That newspaper then sent out checkers to tally the longer parades. On actual count they dwindled sadly; four thousand was discovered to be an impressive procession, ten thousand almost endless.
Actually the longest demonstration of record lasted one minute and thirty-three seconds, if I am not mistaken, and was inspired by Sir Henry Irving's return to the stage of the Lyceum after a long illness. I ignore, of course, those purely artificial contests of endurance that mark the modern national political convention. They belong with the six-day bicycle races. Our imaginations have been so debauched that a minute and thirty-three seconds has a tame sound; but count ninety-three slowly, or better still try to clap your hands continuously that long, if you would appreciate what it means.
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