"Exactly! What better chance could you ask? A paper devoted to the interests of the masses, and willing to print facts. I want you to do the same sort of thing that you've been doing for The Courier; a job of handling the big, general stories. You'll be responsible to me alone.

The salary will be a third higher than you are now getting. Think it over."

"I've thought. I'm bought," said Russell Edmonds. He resumed his pipe.

"And you, Mr. Banneker?"

"I'm not a Socialist, in the party sense. Besides a Socialist paper in New York has no chance of big circulation."

"Oh, The Patriot isn't going to tag itself. Politically it will be independent. Its policy will be socialistic only in that it will be for labor rather than capital and for the under dog as against the upper dog. It certainly won't tie up to the Socialist Party or advocate its principles. It's for fair play and education."

"What's your purpose?" demanded Banneker. "Money?"

"I've a very comfortable income," replied Marrineal modestly.

"Political advancement? Influence? Want to pull the wires?" persisted the other.

"The game. I'm out of employment and tired of it."

"And you think I could be of use in your plan? But you don't know much about me."

Marrineal murmured smilingly something indefinite but complimentary as to Banneker's reputation on Park Row; but this was by no means a fair index to what he knew about Banneker.

Indeed, that prematurely successful reporter would have been surprised at the extent to which Marrineal's private investigations had gone. Not only was the purchaser of The Patriot apprised of Banneker's professional career in detail, but he knew of his former employment, and also of his membership in The Retreat, which he regarded with perplexity and admiration. Marrineal was skilled at ascertainments. He made a specialty of knowing all about people.

"With Mr. Edmonds on roving commission and you to handle the big local stuff," he pursued, "we should have the nucleus of a news organization.

Like him, you would be responsible to me alone. And, of course, it would be made worth your while. What do you think? Will you join us?"

"No."

"No?" There was no slightest hint of disappointment, surprise, or resentment in Marrineal's manner. "Do you mind giving me the reason?"

"I don't care to be a reporter on The Patriot."

"Well, this would hardly be reporting. At least, a very specialized and important type."

"For that matter, I don't care to be a reporter on any paper much longer. Besides, you need me--or some one--in another department more than in the news section."

"You don't like the editorials," was the inference which Marrineal drew from this, and correctly.

"I think they're solemn flapdoodle."

"So do I. Occasionally I write them myself and send them in quietly. It isn't known yet that I own the property; so I don't appear at the office. Mine are quite as solemn and flapdoodlish as the others. To which quality do you object the most?"

"Solemnity. It's the blight of editorial expression. All the papers suffer from it."

"Then you wouldn't have the editorial page modeled on that of any of our contemporaries."

"No. I'd try to make it interesting. There isn't a page in town that the average man-in-the-street-car can read without a painful effort at thought."

"Editorials are supposed to be for thinking men," put in Edmonds.

"Make the thinking easy, then. Don't make it hard, with heavy words and a didactic manner. Talk to 'em. You're trying to reach for their brain mechanism. Wrong idea. Reach for their coat-lapels. Hook a finger in the buttonholes and tell 'em something about common things they never stopped to consider. Our editorializers are always tucking their hands into their oratorical bosoms and discoursing in a sonorous voice about freight differentials as an element in stabilizing the market. How does that affect Jim Jones? Why, Jim turns to the sporting page. But if you say to him casually, in print, 'Do you realize that every woman who brings a child into the world shows more heroism than Teddy Roosevelt when he charged up San Juan Hill?'--what'll Jim do about that? Turn to the sporting page just the same, maybe. But after he's absorbed the ball-scores, he'll turn back to the editorial. You see, he never thought about Mrs. Jones just that way before."

"Sentimentalism," observed Marrineal. "Not altogether original, either."

But he did not speak as a critic. Rather as one pondering upon new vistas of thought.

"Why shouldn't an editorial be sentimental about something besides the starry flag and the boyhood of its party's candidate? Original? I shouldn't worry overmuch about that. All my time would be occupied in trying to be interesting. After I got 'em interested, I could perhaps be instructive. Very cautiously, though. But always man to man: that's the editorial trick, as I see it. Not preacher to congregation."

"Where are your editorials, son?" asked the veteran Edmonds abruptly.

"Locked up." Banneker tapped his forehead.

"In the place of their birth?" smiled Marrineal.

"Oh, I don't want too much credit for my idea. A fair share of it belongs to a bald-headed and snarling old nondescript whom I met one day in the Public Library and shall probably never meet again anywhere.

Somebody had pointed me out--it was after that shooting mess--and the old fellow came up to me and growled out, 'Employed on a newspaper?' I admitted it. 'What do you know about news?' was his next question. Well, I'm always open to any fresh slants on the business, so I asked him politely what he knew. He put on an expression like a prayerful owl and said, 'Suppose I came into your office with the information that a destructive plague was killing off the earthworms?' Naturally, I thought one of the librarians had put up a joke on me; so I said, 'Refer you to the Anglers' Department of the All-Outdoors Monthly.' 'That is as far as you could see into the information?' he said severely. I had to confess that it was. 'And you are supposed to be a judge of news!' he snarled.

Well, he seemed so upset about it that I tried to be soothing by asking him if there was an earthworm pestilence in progress. 'No,' answers he, 'and lucky for you. For if the earthworms all died, so would you and the rest of us, including your accursed brood of newspapers, which would be some compensation. Read Darwin,' croaks the old bird, and calls me a callow fool, and flits."

"Who was he? Did you find out?" asked Edmonds.

"Some scientific grubber from the museum. I looked up the Darwin book and decided that he was right; not Darwin; the old croaker."

"Still, that was not precisely news," pointed out Marrineal.

"Theoretical news. I'm not sure," pursued Banneker, struck with a new idea, "that that isn't the formula for editorial writing; theoretical news. Supplemented by analytical news, of course."

"Philosophizing over Darwin and dead worms would hardly inspire half a million readers to follow your editorial output, day after day."

Marrineal delivered his opinion suavely.

"Not if written in the usual style, suggesting a conscientious rehash of the encyclopedia. But suppose it were done differently, and with a caption like this, 'Why Does an Angle-Worm Wriggle?' Set that in irregular type that weaved and squirmed across the column, and Jones-in-the-street-car would at least look at it."

"Good Heavens! I should think so," assented Marrineal. "And call for the police."

"Or, if that is too sensational," continued Banneker, warming up, "we could head it 'Charles Darwin Would Never Go Fishing, Because' and a heavy dash after 'because.'"

"Fakey," pronounced Edmonds. "Still, I don't know that there's any harm in that kind of faking."

"Merely a trick to catch the eye. I don't know whether Darwin ever went fishing or not. Probably he did if only for his researches. But, in essentials, I'm giving 'em a truth; a big truth."

"What?" inquired Marrineal.

"Solemn sermonizers would call it the inter-relations of life or something to that effect. What I'm after is to coax 'em to think a little."

"About angle-worms?"

"About anything. It's the process I'm after. Only let me start them thinking about evolution and pretty soon I'll have them thinking about the relations of modern society--and thinking my way. Five hundred thousand people, all thinking in the way we told 'em to think--"

"Could elect Willis Enderby mayor of New York," interjected the practical Edmonds.