"The joss is just tricky enough for that," said Tommy. "He'll want to put you in the wrong with Gordon. You're a pet of the boss's."

"Don't blame Greenough," said Banneker. "If you were on the desk you wouldn't want reporters that wouldn't take orders."

Van Cleve, oldest in standing of any of the staff, approached Banneker with a grave face and solemn warnings. To leave The Ledger was to depart forever from the odor of journalistic sanctity. No other office in town was endurable for a gentleman. Other editors treated their men like muckers. The worst assignment given out from The Ledger desk was a perfumed cinch in comparison with what the average city room dealt out.

And he gave a formidable sketch of the careers (invariably downhill) of reckless souls who had forsaken the true light of The Ledger for the false lures which led into outer and unfathomable darkness. By this system of subtly threatened excommunication had The Ledger saved to itself many a good man who might otherwise have gone farther and not necessarily fared worse. Banneker was not frightened. But he did give more than a thought to the considerate standards and generous comradeship of the office. Only--was it worth the price in occasional humiliation?

Sitting, idle at his desk in one of the subsequent periods of penance, he bethought him of the note on the stationery of The New Era Magazine, signed, "Yours very truly, Richard W. Gaines." Perhaps this was opportunity beckoning. He would go to see the Great Gaines.

The Great Gaines received him with quiet courtesy. He was a stubby, thick, bearded man who produced an instant effect of entire candor. So peculiar and exotic was this quality that it seemed to set him apart from the genus of humankind in an aura of alien and daunting honesty.

Banneker recalled hearing of outrageous franknesses from his lips, directed upon small and great, and, most amazingly, accepted without offense, because of the translucent purity of the medium through which, as it were, the inner prophet had spoken. Besides, he was usually right.

His first words to Banneker, after his greeting, were: "You are exceedingly well tailored."

"Does it matter?" asked Banneker, smiling.

"I'm disappointed. I had read into your writing midnight toil and respectable, if seedy, self-support."

"After the best Grub Street tradition? Park Row has outlived that."

"I know your tailor, but what's your college?" inquired this surprising man.

Banneker shook his head.

"At least I was right in that. I surmised individual education. Who taught you to think for yourself?"

"My father."

"It's an uncommon name. You're not a son of Christian Banneker, perhaps?"

"Yes. Did you know him?"

"A mistaken man. Whoring after strange gods. Strange, sterile, and disappointing. But a brave soul, nevertheless. Yes; I knew him well.

What did he teach you?"

"He tried to teach me to stand on my own feet and see with my own eyes and think for myself."

"Ah, yes! With one's own eyes. So much depends upon whither one turns them. What have you seen in daily journalism?"

"A chance. Possibly a great chance."

"To think for yourself?"

Banneker started, at this ready application of his words to the problem which was already outlining itself by small, daily limnings in his mind.

"To write for others what you think for yourself?" pursued the editor, giving sharpness and definition to the outline.

"Or," concluded Mr. Gaines, as his hearer preserved silence, "eventually to write for others what they think for themselves?" He smiled luminously. "It's a problem in stress: _x_ = the breaking-point of honesty. Your father was an absurdly honest man. Those of us who knew him best honored him."

"Are you doubting my honesty?" inquired Banneker, without resentment or challenge.

"Why, yes. Anybody's. But hopefully, you understand."

"Or the honesty of the newspaper business?"

A sigh ruffled the closer tendrils of Mr. Gaines's beard. "I have never been a journalist in the Park Row sense," he said regretfully.

"Therefore I am conscious of solutions of continuity in my views. Park Row amazes me. It also appalls me. The daily stench that arises from the printing-presses. Two clouds; morning and evening.... Perhaps it is only the odor of the fertilizing agent, stimulating the growth of ideas. Or is it sheer corruption?"

"Two stages of the same process, aren't they?" suggested Banneker.

"Encouraging to think so. Yet labor in a fertilizing plant, though perhaps essential, is hardly conducive to higher thinking. You like it?"

"I don't accept your definition at all," replied Banneker. "The newspapers are only a medium. If there is a stench, they do not originate it. They simply report the events of the day."

"Exactly. They simply disseminate it."

Banneker was annoyed at himself for flushing. "They disseminate news.

We've got to have news, to carry on the world. Only a small fraction of it is--well, malodorous. Would you destroy the whole system because of one flaw? You're not fair."

"Fair? Of course I'm not. How should I be? No; I would not destroy the system. Merely deodorize it a bit. But I suppose the public likes the odors. It sniffs 'em up like--like Cyrano in the bake-shop. A marvelous institution, the public which you and I serve. Have you ever thought of magazine work, Mr. Banneker?"

"A little."

"There might be a considerable future there for you. I say 'might.'

Nothing is more uncertain. But you have certain--er--stigmata of the writer--That article, now, about the funereal eulogies over the old builder; did you report that talk as it was?"

"Approximately."

"How approximately?"

"Well; the basic idea was there. The old fellows gave me that, and I fitted it up with talk. Surely there's nothing dishonest in that,"

protested Banneker.

"Surely not," agreed the other. "You gave the essence of the thing. That is a higher veracity than any literal reporting which would be dull and unreadable. I thought I recognized the fictional quality in the dialogue."

"But it wasn't fiction," denied Banneker eagerly.

The Great Gaines gave forth one of his oracles. "But it was. Good dialogue is talk as it should be talked, just as good fiction is life as it should be lived--logically and consecutively. Why don't you try something for The New Era?"

"I have."

"When?"

"Before I got your note."

"It never reached me."

"It never reached anybody. It's in my desk, ripening."

"Send it along, green, won't you? It may give more indications that way.