Americana: When Rumor Speaks

Open your ears, for which of you will stop

The vent of hearing when loud Rumor speaks?

—Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 2

Somebody told somebody that Mabel Sheehan, 72, who lives alone with her sheep dog in a working-class district of Philadelphia, had bought a car for a friend. Somebody else heard that she had paid for several trips to Puerto Rico for other friends. None of this was true, police said later, but people in the neighborhood began estimating how much money she might have stashed away in her modest row house. Someone guessed $35,000. Someone guessed more. There was even talk of a hoard of $45 million. None of this was true either—her only income is her monthly $247 Social Security check, and her only saving consists of a prepaid burial—but when the rumors started spreading last week, a crowd of 300 curiosity seekers gathered in front of her house. So did 100 police, on horses and in riot gear, assigned to protect the house from vandalism. Said one skeptical youth: "If there is no money in there, why are all these police guarding the house?" By this time, Sheehan had fled to a convent for safety. It took police a full day of persuasion, plus 19 arrests, to convince the crowd that the whole situation was much ado about nothing.