The Clarion

CHAPTER XI

THE INI­TI­ATE

With­in a month af­ter Hal's ac­qui­si­tion of the “Clar­ion,” Dr. Sur­taine had be­come a dai­ly caller at the of­fice. “Just to talk things over,” was his ex­pla­na­tion of these in­cur­sions, which Hal al­ways wel­comed, no mat­ter how busy he might be. Ad­vice was gen­er­al­ly the form which the vis­itor's talk took; some­times warn­ing; not in­fre­quent­ly sug­ges­tions of greater or less val­ue. Al­ways his coun­sel was for peace and pol­icy.

“Keep in with the busi­ness el­ement, Boy­ee. Re­mem­ber all the time that Wor­thing­ton is a busi­ness city, the liveli­est lit­tle busi­ness city be­tween New York and Chica­go. Busi­ness made it. Busi­ness runs it. Busi­ness is go­ing to keep on run­ning it. Any­body who works on a dif­fer­ent prin­ci­ple, I don't care whether it's in pol­itics or jour­nal­ism or the pul­pit, is go­ing to get hurt. I don't de­ny you've braced up the 'Clar­ion.' Peo­ple are be­gin­ning to talk about it al­ready. But the best men, the mon­eyed men, are hold­ing off. They aren't sure of you yet. Some­times I'm not sure my­self. Ev­ery now and then the pa­per takes a stand I don't like. It goes too far. You've put gin­ger in­to it. I have to ad­mit that. And gin­ger's a good thing, but sug­ar catch­es more flies.”

The no­tion of a break­fast to the staff met with the Doc­tor's in­stant ap­proval.

“That's the idea!” said he “I'll come to it, my­self. Lay down your gen­er­al scheme and pol­icy to 'em. Get 'em in sym­pa­thy with it. If any of 'em aren't in sym­pa­thy with it, get rid of those. Kick­ers nev­er did any busi­ness any good. You'll get plen­ty of kicks from out­side. Then, when the of­fice gets used to your way of do­ing things, you can quit wast­ing so much time on the news and ed­ito­ri­al end.”

“But that's what makes the pa­per, Dad.”

“Get over that idea. You hire men to get out the pa­per. Let 'em earn their pay while you watch the door where the dol­lars come in. Ad­ver­tis­ing, my son: that's the point to work at. In a way I'm sor­ry you let Sterne out.”

The ex-​ed­itor had left, a fort­night be­fore, on a ba­sis agree­able to him­self and Hal, and McGuire El­lis had tak­en over his du­ties.

“Cer­tain­ly you had no rea­son to like Sterne, Dad.”

“For all that, he knew his job. Ev­ery­thing Sterne did had a dol­lar some­where in the back­ground. Even his black­mail­ing game. He worked with the busi­ness of­fice, and he took his or­ders on that ba­sis. Now if you had some man whom you could turn over this news end to while you're build­ing up a sound ad­ver­tis­ing pol­icy--”

“How about McGuire El­lis?”

Dr. Sur­taine glanced over to the win­dow cor­ner where the as­so­ciate ed­itor was som­nam­bu­lant­ly fight­ing a fly for the priv­ilege of con­tin­uing a nap.

“Too much of a the­orist: too much of a knock­er.”

“He's taught me what lit­tle I know about this busi­ness,” said Hal. “Hi! Wake up, El­lis. Do you know you've got to make a speech in an hour? This is the day of the For­mal Feed.”

“Hoong!” grunt­ed El­lis, arous­ing him­self. “Speech? I can't make a speech. Make it your­self.”

“I'm go­ing to.”

“What are you go­ing to talk about?”

“Well, I might bor­row your text and preach them a ser­mon on hon­esty in jour­nal­ism. Se­ri­ous­ly, I think the whole pa­per has de­gen­er­at­ed to low ide­als, and if I put it to them straight, that ev­ery man of them, re­porter, copy-​read­er, or ed­itor, has got to mea­sure up to an ab­so­lute­ly straight stan­dard of hon­esty--”

“They'll throw the table­ware at you,” said McGuire El­lis qui­et­ly: “at least they ought to, if they don't.”

The two Sur­taines stared at him in sur­prise.

“Who are you,” con­tin­ued the jour­nal­ist, “to talk stan­dards of hon­esty in jour­nal­ism to those boys?”

“He's their boss: that's all he is,” said Dr. Sur­taine weight­ily.

“Let him set the ex­am­ple, then, jack the pa­per up where it be­longs, and there'll be no dif­fi­cul­ty with the men who write it.”

“But, Mac, you've been ham­mer­ing at me about the crooked­ness of jour­nal­ism in Wor­thing­ton from the first.”

“All right. Crooked­ness there is. Where does it come from? From the men in con­trol, most­ly. Let me tell you some­thing, you two: there's hard­ly a re­porter in this city who isn't more hon­est than the pa­per he works for.”

“Hi­fa­lutin non­sense,” said Dr. Sur­taine.

“From your point of view. You're an out­sider. It's out­siders that make the news­pa­per game as bad as it is. Look at 'em in this town. Who owns the 'Ban­ner'? A po­lit­ical boss. Who owns the 'News'? A brew­er. The 'Star'? A pro­mot­er, and a pret­ty scaly one at that. The 'Ob­serv­er' be­longs body and soul to an ad­ver­tis­ing agen­cy, and the 'Tele­graph' is con­trolled by the banks. And one and all of 'em take their or­ders from the Dry Goods Union, which means Elias M. Pierce, be­cause they live on its ad­ver­tis­ing.”

“Why not? That's busi­ness,” said Dr. Sur­taine.

“Are we talk­ing about busi­ness? I thought it was stan­dards. What do those men know about the ethics of jour­nal­ism? If you put the thing up to him, like as not E.M. Pierce would tell you that an eth­ic is some­thing a doc­tor gives you to make you sleep.”

“How about the 'Clar­ion,' Mac?” said Hal, smil­ing. “It's run by an out­sider, too, isn't it?”

“That's what I want to know.” There was no an­swer­ing smile on El­lis's somber and earnest face. “I've thought there was hope for you. You've had no sound busi­ness train­ing, thank God, so your sense of de­cen­cy may not have been spoiled.”

“You don't seem to think much of busi­ness stan­dards,” said the Doc­tor tol­er­ant­ly.

“Not a great deal. I've bumped in­to 'em too hard. Not so long ago I was pub­lish­er of a pay­ing dai­ly in an East­ern city. The di­rec­tors were all high-​class busi­ness men, and the chair­man of the board was one of those phi­lan­thropist-​char­ity-​do­na­tor-​pil­lar-​of-​the-​church chaps with a per­ma­nent crease of high re­spectabil­ity down his front. Well, one day there turned up a dou­ble mur­der in the den of one of these vene­re­al quacks that in­fest ev­ery city. It set me on the trail, and I had my best re­porter get up a se­ries about that gang of vam­pires. Nat­ural­ly that ne­ces­si­tat­ed throw­ing out their ads. The ad­ver­tis­ing man­ag­er put up a howl, and we took the thing to the board of di­rec­tors. In those days I had all my en­thu­si­asm on tap. I had an ar­ray of facts, too, and I went at that board like a re­vival­ist, telling 'em just the kind of dev­il-​work the 'men's spe­cial­ists' did. At the fin­ish I sat down feel­ing pret­ty good. No­body said any­thing for quite a while. Then the chair­man dropped the pen­cil he'd been put­ter­ing with, and said, in a kind of purry voice: 'Gen­tle­men: I thought Mr. El­lis's job on this pa­per was to make it pay div­idends, and not to cen­sor the morals of the com­mu­ni­ty.'”

“And, by crikey, he was right!” cried Dr. Sur­taine.

“From the busi­ness point of view.”

“Oh, you the­orists! You the­orists!” Dr. Sur­taine threw out his hands in a ges­ture of pleas­ant de­spair. “You want to run the world like a Sun­day-​school class.”

“In­stead of like a three-​card-​monte game.”

“With your lofty no­tions, El­lis, how did you ev­er come to work on a sheet like the 'Clar­ion'?”

“A man's got to eat. When I walked out of that di­rec­tors' meet­ing I walked out of my job and in­to a sa­loon; and from that sa­loon I walked in­to a good many oth­er sa­loons. Luck­ily for me, booze knocked me out ear­ly. I broke down, went West, got my health and some sense back again, drift­ed to this town, found an open­ing on the 'Clar­ion,' and took it, to make a liv­ing.”

“You won't con­tin­ue to do that,” ad­vised Dr. Sur­taine blunt­ly, “if you keep on try­ing to re­form your boss­es.”

“But what makes me sick,” con­tin­ued El­lis, dis­re­gard­ing this hint, “is to have peo­ple as­sume that news­pa­per men are a lot of se­mi-​crooks and shys­ters. What does the pet­ty graft­ing that a few re­porters do--and, mind you, there's mighty lit­tle of it done--amount to, com­pared with the rot­ten­ness of a pa­per run by my church-​go­ing re­former with the busi­ness stan­dards?”

A call from the busi­ness of­fice took Hal away. At once El­lis turned to the old­er man.

“Are you go­ing to run the pa­per, Doc?”

“No: no, my boy. Hal owns it, on his own mon­ey.”

“Be­cause if you are, I quit.”

“That's no way to talk,” said the mag­nate, ag­grieved. “There isn't a man in Wor­thing­ton treats his em­ploy­ees bet­ter or gets along with 'em smoother than me.”

“That's right, too, I guess. On­ly I don't hap­pen to want to be your em­ploy­ee.”

“You're frank, at least, Mr. El­lis.”

“Why not? I've laid my cards on the ta­ble. You know me for what I am, a dis­grun­tled dream­er. I know you for what you are, a hard-​head­ed busi­ness man. We don't have to quar­rel about it. Tell you what I'll do: I'll match you, horse-​and-​horse, for the soul of your boy.”

“You're a queer Dick, El­lis.”

“Don't want to match? Then I sup­pose I've got to fight you for him,” sighed the ed­itor.

The big man laughed whole-​heart­ed­ly. “Not a chance, my friend! Not a chance on earth. I don't be­lieve even a wom­an could come be­tween Hal and me, let alone a man.”

“_Or_ a prin­ci­ple?”

“Ah--ah! Deal­ing in ab­strac­tions again. Look out for this fel­low, Boy­ee,” he called jovial­ly as Hal came back to his desk. “He'll make your pa­per the of­fi­cial or­gan of the Muck­rak­ers' Union.”

“I'll watch him,” promised Hal. “Mean­time I'll take your ad­vice about my speech, Mac, and blue-​pen­cil the how-​to-​be-​good stuff.”

“Now you're talk­ing! I'll tell you, Boss: why not get some of the fel­lows to speak up. You might learn a few things about your own pa­per that would in­ter­est you.”

“Good idea! But, Mac, I wish you wouldn't call me 'Boss.' It makes me feel ab­surd­ly young.”

“All right, Hal,” re­turned El­lis, with a grin. “But you've still got some young­ness to over­come, you know.”

An hour lat­er, look­ing down the long lun­cheon ta­ble, the ed­itor-​own­er felt his own in­ex­pe­ri­ence more poignant­ly. With a very few ex­cep­tions, these men, his em­ploy­ees, were his se­niors in years. More than that, he thought to see in the faces an air of ca­pa­bil­ity, of as­sur­ance, of pre­pared­ness, a sort of work-​wor­thi­ness like the sea­wor­thi­ness of a ves­sel which has passed the high test of wind and wave. And to him, un­tried, un­formed, ig­no­rant, the light am­ateur, all this hu­man mech­anism must look for guid­ance. Hu­mil­ity cloud­ed him at the rec­ol­lec­tion of the spir­it in which he had tak­en on the re­spon­si­bil­ity so vivid­ly per­son­ified be­fore him, a spir­it of head­long wrath and re­venge, and he came fer­vent­ly to a re­al­iza­tion and a re­solve. He saw him­self as part of a close-​knit whole; he vi­sioned, sharply, the In­sti­tu­tion, com­plex, del­icate, al­most in­finite­ly pow­er­ful for good or evil, not alone to those who com­posed it, but to the com­mu­ni­ty to which it bore so sub­tle a re­la­tion­ship. And he re­solved, with a de­ter­mi­na­tion that par­took of the na­ture of prayer and yet was more than prayer, to give him­self loy­al­ly, un­spar­ing­ly, de­vot­ed­ly to the com­mon task. In this spir­it he rose, at the close of the lun­cheon, to speak.

No news­pa­per re­port­ed the maid­en speech of Mr. Har­ring­ton Sur­taine to the staff of the Wor­thing­ton “Clar­ion.” News­pa­pers are ret­icent about their own af­fairs. In this case it is rather a pity, for the ef­fort is said to have been an em­inent­ly suc­cess­ful one. Es­ti­mat­ed by its ef­fect, it cer­tain­ly was, for it ma­te­ri­al­ized with quite spiri­tis­tic sud­den­ness, from out the murk of un­cer­tain­ty and sus­pi­cion, the form and sub­stance of a new _es­prit de corps_, among the “Clar­ion” men, and es­tab­lished the sys­tem of Talk-​it-​Over Break­fasts which made a close-​knit, jeal­ous­ly guard­ed cor­po­ra­tion and club out of the staff. Free of all os­ten­ta­tion or self-​as­sertive­ness was Hal's talk; sim­ple, and, above all virtues, brief. He didn't tell his em­ploy­ees what he ex­pect­ed of them. He told them what they might ex­pect of him. The frank­ness of his man­ner, the self-​re­spect­ing mod­esty of his at­ti­tude to­ward an au­di­ence of more ex­pe­ri­enced sub­or­di­nates, his shin­ing faith and be­lief in the pro­fes­sion which he had adopt­ed; all this eked out by his ease of ad­dress and his dom­inant phys­ical charm, won them from the first. On­ly at the close did he ven­ture up­on an as­ser­tion of his own ideas or the­ories.

“It is the Syd­ney 'Bul­letin,' I think, which pre­serves as its mot­to the propo­si­tion that ev­ery man has at least one good sto­ry in him. I have been study­ing news­pa­per files since I took this job,--all the files of all the pa­pers I could get,--and I'm al­most ready to be­lieve that much news which the pa­pers pub­lish has got real­er facts up its sleeve: that the news is on­ly the shad­ow of the facts. I'd like to get at the Why of the day's news. Do you re­mem­ber Sher­lock Holmes's 'com­mon­place' di­vorce suit, where the re­al cause was that the hus­band used to re­move his front teeth and hurl 'em at the wife when­ev­er her break­fast-​ta­ble con­ver­sa­tion wasn't spright­ly enough to suit him? Once out of a hun­dred times, I sup­pose, the ev­ery­day pro­cess­es of our courts hide some­thing pic­turesque or per­haps im­por­tant in the back­ground. Any pa­per that could get and present that sort of news would liv­en up its columns a good deal. And it would strike a new note in Wor­thing­ton. I'll give you a mot­to for the 'Clar­ion,' gen­tle­men: 'The Facts Be­hind the News.' And now I've said my say, and I want to hear from you.”

Here for the first time Hal struck a false note. News­pa­per men, as a class, ab­hor pub­lic speak­ing. So much are they com­pelled to hear from “those bores who prate in­tol­er­ably over din­ner ta­bles,” that they re­gard the man who speaks when he isn't man­ifest­ly obliged to, as an en­emy to the pub­lic weal, and are them­selves most loath thus to add to the sum of hu­man suf­fer­ing. Mere­ly by way of sav­ing the sit­ua­tion, Wayne, the city ed­itor, arose and said a few words com­pli­men­ta­ry to the new own­er. He was fol­lowed by the head copy-​read­er in the same strain. Two of the old­er sub-​ed­itors per­pe­trat­ed some mean­ing­less but well-​meant re­marks, and the cur­rent of events bade fair to end in com­plete stag­na­tion, when from out of the ruck, mid­way of the ta­ble, there rose the fringed and can­did head of one William S. March­mont, the rail­road and mar­kets re­porter.

March­mont was an el­der­ly man, of a jour­nal­is­tic type fast dis­ap­pear­ing. There is lit­tle room in the lat­ter-​day pres­sure of news­pa­per life for the man who works on “booze.” But though a steady drinker, and oc­ca­sion­al­ly an un­steady one, March­mont had his val­ue. He was an ex­pert in his spe­cial­ty. He had a wide ac­quain­tance, and he sel­dom be­came un­pro­fes­sion­al­ly drunk in work­ing hours. To off­set the un­wont­ed strain of ris­ing be­fore noon, how­ev­er, he had for­ti­fied him­self for this oc­ca­sion by sev­er­al cock­tails which were man­ifest in his beam­ing smile and his ex­pan­sive flour­ish in wel­com­ing Mr. Sur­taine to the good­ly fel­low­ship of the pen.

“Very good, all that about the facts be­hind the news,” he said ge­nial­ly. “Very in­struc­tive and--and il­lu­mi­nat­ing. But what I wan­ta ask you is this: We fel­lows who have to _write_ the facts be­hind the news; where do we get off?”

“I don't un­der­stand you,” said Hal.

“Lemme ex­plain. Last week we had an ac­ci­dent on the Mid-​and-​Mud. En­gi­neer ran by his sig­nals. Rear end col­li­sion. Sev­en peo­ple killed. Coro­ner's in­quest put all the blame on the en­gi­neer. En­gi­neer wasn't tend­ing to his du­ty. That's news, isn't it, Mr. Sur­taine?”

“Un­doubt­ed­ly.”

“Yes: but here's the facts. That en­gi­neer had been kept on du­ty forty-​eight hours with on­ly five hours off. He was asleep when he ran past the block and killed those peo­ple.”

“Is he telling the truth, Mac?” asked Hal in a swift aside to El­lis.

“If he says so, it's right,” replied El­lis.

“What do you call that?” pur­sued the speak­er.

“Mur­der. I call it mur­der.” Max Velt­man, who sat just be­yond the speak­er, half rose from his chair. “The men who run the road ought to be tried for mur­der.”

“Oh, _you_ can call it that, all right, in one of your So­cial­ist meet­ings,” re­turned the re­porter ge­nial­ly. “But I can't.”

“Why can't you?” de­mand­ed Hal.

“The rail­road peo­ple would shut down on news to the 'Clar­ion.' I couldn't get a word out of them on any­thing. What good's a re­porter who can't get news? You'd fire me in a week.”

“Can you prove the facts?”

“I can.”

“Write it for to-​mor­row's pa­per. I'll see that you don't lose your place.”

March­mont sat down, blink­ing. Again there was si­lence around the ta­ble, but this time it was elec­tric, with the sense of flash­es to come. The slow drawl of Lind­say, the the­ater re­porter, seemed an­ti-​cli­mat­ic as he spoke up, slouched deep in his seat.

“How much do you know of dra­mat­ic crit­icism in this town, Mr. Sur­taine?”

“Noth­ing.”

“Maybe, then, you'll be pained to learn that we're a set of liars--I might even go fur­ther--my­self among the num­ber. There hasn't been hon­est dra­mat­ic crit­icism writ­ten in Wor­thing­ton for years.”

“That is hard to be­lieve, Mr. Lind­say.”

“Not if you un­der­stand the sit­ua­tion. Sup­pose I roast a show like 'The Nymph in the Night­ie' that played here last week. It's va­pid and sil­ly, and rot­ten with sug­ges­tive­ness. I wouldn't let my kid sis­ter go with­in gun­shot of it. But I've got to tell ev­ery­body else's kid sis­ter, through our columns, that it's a de­light­ful and en­liven­ing _mélange_ of high class fun and frol­ic. To be sure, I can praise a fine per­for­mance like 'Kin­dling' or 'The Ser­vant in the House,' but I've got to give just as clean a bill of health to a gut­ter-​and-​broth­el farce. Oth­er­wise, the high-​mind­ed gen­tle­men that run our the­aters will cut off my tick­ets.”

“Buy them at the box-​of­fice,” said Hal.

“No use. They wouldn't let me in. The courts have killed hon­est crit­icism by de­cid­ing that a man­ag­er can keep a crit­ic out on any pre­text or with­out any. Be­sides, there's the ad­ver­tis­ing. We'd lose that.”

“Speak­ing of ad­ver­tis­ing,”--now it was Lynch, a young re­porter who had risen from be­ing an of­fice boy,--“I guess it spoils some pret­ty good sto­ries from the down-​town dis­trict. Look at that ac­ci­dent at Schef­fer and Mintz's; worth three columns of any­body's space. Tank on the roof broke, and drowned out a cou­ple of hun­dred cus­tomers. Pan­ic, and bro­ken bones, and all kinds of things. How much did we give it? One stick! And we didn't name the place: just called it 'a Wash­ing­ton Street store.' There were facts be­hind _that_ news, all right. But I guess Mr. Shear­son wouldn't have been pleased if we'd print­ed 'em.”

In fact, Shear­son, the ad­ver­tis­ing man­ag­er, looked far from pleased at the men­tion.

“If you think a one-​day sto­ry would pay for the loss of five thou­sand a year in ad­ver­tis­ing, you've got an­oth­er guess, young man,” he growled.

“He's right, there,” said Dr. Sur­taine, on one side of Hal; and from the oth­er, McGuire El­lis chirped:--

“Things are be­gin­ning to open up, all right, Mr. Ed­itor.”

Two as­pi­rants were now vy­ing for the floor, the win­ner be­ing the po­lit­ical re­porter for the pa­per.

“Would you like to hear some facts about the news we don't print?” he asked.

“Go ahead,” replied Hal. “You have the floor.”

“You re­call a big suf­frage meet­ing here re­cent­ly, at which Mrs. Bark­er­ly from Lon­don spoke. Well, the chair­man of that meet­ing didn't get a line of his speech in the pa­pers: didn't even get his name men­tioned. Do you know why?”

“I can't even imag­ine,” said Hal.

“Be­cause he's the So­cial­ist can­di­date for Gov­er­nor of this State. He's black­balled from pub­li­ca­tion in ev­ery news­pa­per here.”

“By whom?” in­quired Hal.

“By the hint­ed wish of the Cham­ber of Com­merce. They're so afraid of the So­cial­ist move­ment that they daren't even ad­mit it's alive.”

“Not at all!” Dr. Sur­taine's ro­tund bass boomed out the de­nial. “There are some move­ments that it's wis­est to dis­re­gard. They'll die of them­selves. So­cial­ism is a de­struc­tive force. Why should the pa­pers help spread it by notic­ing it in their columns?”

“Well, I'm no So­cial­ist,” said the po­lit­ical re­porter, “but I'm a news­pa­per man, and I say it's news when a So­cial­ist does a thing just as much as when any one else does it. Yet if I tried to print it, they'd give me the laugh on the copy-​desk.”

“It's a fact that we're all tied down on the news in this town,” cor­rob­orat­ed Wayne; “what be­tween the Cham­ber of Com­merce and the Dry Goods Union and the the­aters and the oth­er steady ad­ver­tis­ers. You must have no­ticed, Mr. Sur­taine, that if there's a shoplift­ing case or any­thing of that kind you nev­er see the name of the store in print. It's al­ways 'A State Street De­part­ment Store' or 'A War­bur­ton Av­enue Shop.' Ask El­lis if that isn't so.”

“Cor­rect,” said El­lis.

“Why shouldn't it be so?” cried Shear­son. “You fel­lows make me tired. You're al­ways think­ing of the news and nev­er of the ad­ver­tis­ing. Who is it pays your salaries, do you think? The men who ad­ver­tise in the 'Clar­ion.'”

“Hear! Hear!” from Dr. Sur­taine.

“And what earth­ly good does it do to print stuff like those shoplift­ing cas­es? Where's the harm in pro­tect­ing the store?”

“I'll tell you where,” said El­lis. “That McBur­ney girl case. They got the wrong girl, and, to cov­er them­selves, they tried to rail­road her. It was a clear case. Ev­ery pa­per in town had the facts. Yet they gave that girl the rep­uta­tion of a thief and nev­er print­ed a cor­rec­tion for fear of let­ting in the store for a dam­age suit.”

“Did the 'Clar­ion' do that?” asked Hal.

“Yes.”

“Get me a full re­port of the facts.”

“What are you go­ing to do?” asked Shear­son.

“Print them.”

“Oh, my Lord!” groaned Shear­son.

The cir­cle was now draw­ing in and the talk be­came brisker, more de­tailed, more in­ti­mate. To his over­whelm­ing amaze­ment Hal learned some of the ma­jor facts of that sub­ter­ranean jour­nal­is­tic his­to­ry which nev­er gets in­to print; the ug­ly sto­ry of the black­mail of a Pres­ident of the Unit­ed States by a patent medicine con­cern (Dr. Sur­taine ver­ified this with a nod); the in­side facts of the fail­ure of an im­por­tant sen­ato­ri­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion which came to noth­ing be­cause of the drunk­en de­bauch­ery of the chief sen­ato­ri­al in­ves­ti­ga­tor; the dread­ful de­tails of the death of a lead­ing mer­chant in a great East­ern city, which were so glossed over by the lo­cal press that few of his fel­low cit­izens ev­er had an inkling of the truth; the ob­tain­able and moral­ly prov­able facts of the con­spir­acy on the part of a mighty fi­nancier which had plunged a na­tion in­to pan­ic; these and many oth­er strange nar­ra­tives of the news, known to ev­ery old news­pa­per man, which made the neo­phyte's head whirl. Then, in a pause, a young voice said:

“Well, to bring the sub­ject up to date, what about the deaths in the Rook­eries?”

“Shut up,” said Wayne sharply.

There fol­lowed a gen­er­al mur­mur of ques­tion and an­swer. “What about the Rook­eries?”--“Don't know.”--“They say the death-​rate is a ter­ror.”--“Are they con­ceal­ing it at the City Hall?”--“No; Mer­ritt can't find out.”--“Bet Tip O'Far­rell can.”--“Oh, he's in on the game.”--“Just an­oth­er fake, I guess.”

In vain Hal strove to catch a clue from the con­fused voic­es. He had made a note of it for fu­ture in­quiry, when some one called out: “Mac El­lis hasn't said any­thing yet.” The oth­ers caught it up. “Speech from Mac!”--“Don't let him out.”--“If you can't speak, sing a song.”--“Play a tune on the _bazoo_.”--“Hike him up there, some­body.”--“Si­lence for the MacGuire!!”

“I've nev­er made a speech in my life,” said El­lis, glow­er­ing about him, “and you fel­lows know it. But last night I read this in Plutarch: 'Themis­to­cles said that he cer­tain­ly could not make use of any stringed in­stru­ment; could on­ly, were a small and ob­scure city put in­to his hands, make it great and glo­ri­ous.'”

El­lis paused, lift­ing one hand. “Fel­lows,” he said, and he turned sharply to face Hal Sur­taine, “I don't know how the dev­il old Themis­to­cles ev­er could do it--un­less he owned a news­pa­per!”

Si­lence fol­lowed, and then a quick ac­claim­ing shout, as they grasped the im­plic­it chal­lenge of the corol­lary. Then again si­lence, tense with cu­rios­ity. No doubt of what they await­ed. Their ex­pectan­cy drew Hal to his feet.

“I had in­tend­ed to speak but once,” he said, in a con­strained voice, “but I've learned more here this af­ter­noon--more than--than I could have thought--” He broke off and threw up his hand. “I'm no news­pa­per man,” he cried. “I'm on­ly an am­ateur, a fresh­man at this busi­ness. But one thing I be­lieve; it's the busi­ness of a news­pa­per to give the news with­out fear or fa­vor, and that's what the 'Clar­ion' is go­ing to do from this day. On that plat­form I'll stand by any man who'll stand by me. Will you help?”

The an­swer rose and rang like a cheer. The gath­er­ing broke in­to lit­tle, ex­cit­ed, chat­ter­ing groups, sure symp­tom of the suc­cess of a meet­ing. Much con­jec­ture was ex­pressed and not a lit­tle cyn­icism. “Com­pared to us Ish­mael would be a so­ci­ety fa­vorite if Sur­taine car­ries this through,” said one. “It means sus­pen­sion in six months,” proph­esied Shear­son. But most of the men were ex­cit­ed­ly en­thu­si­as­tic. Your news­pa­per man is by na­ture a ro­man­tic; oth­er­wise he would not choose the most ad­ven­tur­ous of call­ings. And the fight­ing tone of the new boss stim­ulat­ed in them the spir­it of chance and change.

Slow­ly and re­luc­tant­ly they drift­ed away to the day's task. At the close Hal sat, thought­ful and spent, in a far cor­ner when El­lis walked heav­ily over to him. The as­so­ciate ed­itor gazed down at his be­mused prin­ci­pal for a time. From his pock­et he drew the thick blue pen­cil of his craft, and with it tapped Hal thrice on the shoul­der.

“Rise up, Sir News­pa­per Man,” he pro­nounced solemn­ly. “I here­by dub thee Knight-​Ed­itor.”