"What about the editing jobs?"

"Desk-work? Chain yourself by the leg, with a blue pencil in your hand to butcher better men's stuff? A managing editor, now, I'll grant you.

He gets his twenty or twenty-five thousand if he doesn't die of overstrain, first. But there's only a few managing editors."

"There are more editorial writers."

"Hired pens. Dishing up other fellows' policies, whether you believe in 'em or not. No; I'm not of that profession, anyway." He specified the profession, a highly ancient and dishonorable one. Mr. Burt, in his gray moods, was neither discriminating nor quite just.

Banneker voiced the question which, at some point in his progress, every thoughtful follower of journalism must meet and solve as best he can.

"When a man goes on a newspaper I suppose he more or less accepts that paper's standards, doesn't he?"

"More or less? To what extent?" countered the expert.

"I haven't figured that out, yet."

"Don't be in a hurry about it," advised the other with a gleam of malice. "The fellows that do figure it out to the end, and are honest enough about it, usually quit."

"You haven't quit."

"Perhaps I'm not honest enough or perhaps I'm too cowardly," retorted the gloomy Burt.

Banneker smiled. Though the other was nearly two years his senior, he felt immeasurably the elder. There is about the true reporter type an infinitely youthful quality; attractive and touching; the eternal juvenile, which, being once outgrown with its facile and evanescent enthusiasms, leaves the expert declining into the hack. Beside this prematurely weary example of a swift and precarious success, Banneker was mature of character and standard. Nevertheless, the seasoned journalist was steeped in knowledge which the tyro craved.

"What would you do," Banneker asked, "if you were sent out to write a story absolutely opposed to something you believed right; political, for instance?"

"I don't write politics. That's a specialty."

"Who does?"

"'Parson' Gale."

"Does he believe in everything The Ledger stands for?"

"Certainly. In office hours. For and in consideration of one hundred and twenty-five dollars weekly, duly and regularly paid."

"Outside of office hours, then."

"Ah; that's different. In Harlem where he lives, the Parson is quite a figure among the reform Democrats. The Ledger, as you know, is Republican; and anything in the way of reform is its favorite butt. So Gale spends his working day poking fun at his political friends and associates."

"Out West we'd call that kind of fellow a yellow pup."

"Well, don't call the Parson that; not to me," warned the other indignantly. "He's as square a man as you'll find on Park Row. Why, you were just saying, yourself, that a reporter is bound to accept his paper's standards when he takes the job."

"Then I suppose the answer is that a man ought to work only on a newspaper in whose policies he believes."

"Which policies? A newspaper has a hundred different ones about a hundred different things. Here in this office we're dead against the split infinitive and the Honest Laboring Man. We don't believe he's honest and we've got our grave doubts as to his laboring. Yet one of our editorial writers is an out-and-out Socialist and makes fiery speeches advising the proletariat to rise and grab the reins of government. But he'd rather split his own head than an infinitive."

"Does he write anti-labor editorials?" asked the bewildered Banneker.

"Not as bad as that. He confines himself to European politics and popular scientific matters. But, of course, wherever there is necessity for an expression of opinion, he's anti-socialist in his writing, as he's bound to be."

"Just a moment ago you were talking of hired pens. Now you seem to be defending that sort of thing. I don't understand your point of view."

"Don't you? Neither do I, I guess," admitted the expositor with great candor. "I can argue it either way and convince myself, so far as the other fellow's work is concerned. But not for my own."

"How do you figure it out for yourself, then?"

"I don't. I dodge. It's a kind of tacit arrangement between the desk and me. In minor matters I go with the paper. That's easy, because I agree with it in most questions of taste and the way of doing things. After all The Ledger _has_ got certain standards of professional conduct and of decent manners; it's a gentleman's paper. The other things, the things where my beliefs conflict with the paper's standards, political or ethical, don't come my way. You see, I'm a specialist; I do mostly the fluffy stuff."

"If that's the way to keep out of embarrassing decisions, I'd like to become a specialist myself."

"You can do it, all right," the other assured him earnestly. "That story of yours shows it. You've got The Ledger touch--no, it's more individual than that. But you've got something that's going to stick out even here.

Just the same, there'll come a time when you'll have to face the other issue of your job or your--well, your conscience."

What Tommy Burt did not say in continuation, and had no need to say, since his expressive and ingenuous face said it for him, was, "And I wonder what you'll do with _that_!"

A far more influential friend than Tommy Burt had been wondering, too, and had, not without difficulty, expressed her doubts in writing.

Camilla Van Arsdale had written to Banneker:

... I know so little of journalism, but there are things about it that I distrust instinctively. Do you remember what that wrangler from the _Jon Cal_ told Old Bill Speed when Bill wanted to hire him: "I wouldn't take any job that I couldn't look in the eye and tell it to go to hell on five minutes' notice." I have a notion that you've got to take that attitude toward a reporting job. There must be so much that a man cannot do without loss of self-respect. Yet, I can't imagine why I should worry about you as to that. Unless it is that, in a strange environment one gets one's values confused.... Have you had to do any "Society"

reporting yet? I hope not. The society reporters of my day were either obsequious little flunkeys and parasites, or women of good connections but no money who capitalized their acquaintanceship to make a poor living, and whom one was sorry for, but would rather not see. Going to places where one is not asked, scavenging for bits of news from butlers and housekeepers, sniffing after scandals--perhaps that is part of the necessary apprenticeship of newspaper work. But it's not a proper work for a gentleman. And, in any case, Ban, you are that, by the grace of your ancestral gods.

Little enough did Banneker care for his ancestral gods: but he did greatly care for the maintenance of those standards which seemed to have grown, indigenously within him, since he had never consciously formulated them. As for reporting, of whatever kind, he deemed Miss Van Arsdale prejudiced. Furthermore, he had met the society reporter of The Ledger, an elderly, mild, inoffensive man, neat and industrious, and discerned in him no stigma of the lickspittle. Nevertheless, he hoped that he would not be assigned to such "society news" as Remington did not cover in his routine. It might, he conceived, lead him into false situations where he could be painfully snubbed. And he had never yet been in a position where any one could snub him without instant reprisals. In such circumstances he did not know exactly what he would do. However, that bridge could be crossed or refused when he came to it.

CHAPTER VI

Such members of the Brashear household as chose to accommodate themselves strictly to the hour could have eight o'clock breakfast in the basement dining-room for the modest consideration of thirty cents; thirty-five with special cream-jug. At these gatherings, usually attended by half a dozen of the lodgers, matters of local interest were weightily discussed; such as the progress of the subway excavations, the establishment of a new Italian restaurant in 11th Street, or the calling away of the fourth-floor-rear by the death of an uncle who would perhaps leave him money. To this sedate assemblage descended one crisp December morning young Wickert, clad in the natty outline of a new Bernholz suit, and obviously swollen with tidings.

"Whaddya know about the latest?" he flung forth upon the coffee-scented air.

"The latest" in young Wickert's compendium of speech might be the garments adorning his trim person, the current song-hit of a vaudeville to which he had recently contributed his critical attention, or some tidbit of purely local gossip. Hainer, the plump and elderly accountant, opined that Wickert had received an augmentation of salary, and got an austere frown for his sally. Evidently Wickert deemed his news to be of special import; he was quite bloated, conversationally. He now dallied with it.

"Since when have you been taking in disguised millionaires, Mrs.

Brashear?"

The presiding genius of the house, divided between professional resentment at even so remotely slurring an implication (for was not the Grove Street house good enough for any millionaire, undisguised!) and human curiosity, requested an explanation.

"I was in Sherry's restaurant last night," said the offhand Wickert.

"I didn't read about any fire there," said the jocose Hainer, pointing his sally with a wink at Lambert, the art-student.

Wickert ignored the gibe. Such was the greatness of his tidings that he could afford to.

"Our firm was giving a banquet to some buyers and big folks in the trade. Private room upstairs; music, flowers, champagne by the case. We do things in style when we do 'em. They sent me up after hours with an important message to our Mr. Webler; he was in charge of arrangements."