I'm not so strong for the editorials. They're always for reform and never for progress."
"Ah, but that's epigram."
"It's true, nevertheless. The Sphere is
green bay packers jerseys always tiptoeing up to the edge of some decisive policy, and then running back in alarm. What of The Observer? They're looking for new blood."
"The Observer! O Lord! Preaches the eternal banalities and believes them the eternal verities."
"Epigram, yourself," grinned Edmonds. "Well, The Monitor?"
"The three-card Monitor, and marked cards at that."
"Yes; you'd have to watch the play. The Graphic then?"
"Nothing but an ornamental ghost. The ghost of a once handsomely kept lady. I don't aspire to write daily epitaphs."
"And The Messenger I suppose you wouldn't even call a kept lady. Too common. Babylonian stuff. But The Express is respectable enough for anybody."
"And conscious of it in every issue. One long and pious scold, after a high-minded, bad-tempered formula of its own."
"Then I'll give you a motto
buffalo bills jerseys for your Ledger." Edmonds puffed it out enjoyably,--decorated with bluish and delicate whorls. "'_Meliora video proboque, deleriora sequor_.'"
"No; I won't have that. The last part will do; we do follow the worser way; but if we see the better, we don't approve it. We don't even recognize it as the better. We're honestly convinced in our advocacy of the devil."
"I don't know that we're honestly convinced of anything on The Courier, except of the desirability of keeping friendly with everybody. But such as we are, we'd grab at you."
"No; thanks, Pop. You yourself are enough in the troubled-water duckling line for one old hen like The Courier."
"Then there remains only The Patriot, friend of the Pee-pul."
"Skimmed scum," was Banneker's
new orleans saints jerseysprompt definition. "And nothing in the soup underneath."
Ernst, the waiter, scuttled across the floor below, and disappeared back of the L-angle a few feet away.
"Somebody's dining there," remarked Edmonds, "while we've been stripping the character off every paper in the field."
"May it be all the editors and owners in a lump!" said Banneker. "I'm sorry I didn't talk louder. I'm feeling reckless."
"Bad frame of mind for a man seeking a job. By the way, what _are_ you out after, exactly? Aiming at the editorial page, aren't you?"
Banneker leaned over the table, his face earnest to the point of somberness. "Pop," he said, "you know I can write."
"You can write like
Cheap nike shox the devil," Edmonds offered up on twin supports of vapor.
"Yes, and I can do more than that. I can think."
"For self, or others?" propounded the veteran.
"I take you. I can think for myself and make it profitable to others, if I can find the chance. Why, Pop, this editorial game is child's play!"
"You've tried it?"
"Experimentally. The opportunities are limitless. I could make people read editorials as eagerly as they read scandal or baseball."
"How?"
"By making them as simple
clay matthews jerseyand interesting as scandal or baseball."
"Oh! As easy as that," observed Edmonds scornfully. "High art, son! Nobody's found the way yet. Perhaps, if--"
He stopped, took his pipe from his lips and let his raised eyes level themselves toward the corner of the L where appeared a figure.
"Would you gentlemen mind if I took my coffee with you?" said the newcomer smoothly.
Banneker looked with questioning eyebrows toward Edmonds, who nodded. "Come up and sit down, Mr. Marrineal," invited Banneker, moving his chair to leave a vacancy between himself and his companion.
Part 2 Chapter 14
Tertius C. Marrineal was a man of
aaron rodgers jerseyforty, upon whom the years had laid no bonds. A large fortune, founded by his able but illiterate father in the timber stretches of the Great Lakes region, and spread out into various profitable enterprises of mining, oil, cattle, and milling, provided him with a constantly increasing income which, though no amateur at spending, he could never quite overtake. Like many other hustlers of his day and opportunity, old Steve Marrineal had married a shrewd little shopgirl who had come up with him through the struggle by the slow, patient steps described in many of our
charles woodson jersey most improving biographies. As frequently occurs, though it doesn't get into the biographies, she who had played a helpful role in adversity, could not withstand affluence. She bloated physically and mentally, and became the juicy and unsuspecting victim of a horde of parasites and flatterers who swarmed eagerly upon her, as soon as the rough and contemptuous protection of her husband was removed by the hand of a medical prodigy who advertised himself as the discoverer of a new and infallible cure for cancer, and whom Mrs. Marrineal, with an
Nike Shox Deliverinstinctive leaning toward quackery, had forced upon her spouse. Appraising his prospective widow with an accurate eye, the dying man left a testament bestowing the bulk of his fortune upon his son, with a few heavy income-producing properties for Mrs. Marrineal. Tertius Marrineal was devoted to his mother, with a jealous, pitying, and protective affection. This is popularly approved as the infallible mark of a good man. Tertius Marrineal was not a good man.