Sam Stone.

Sam Stone! It was a magic name, for Stone had been the boss of the
town since years without number; a man who had never held office, but
who dictated the filling of all offices; a man who was not ostensibly
in any business, but who swayed the fortune of every public
enterprise; a self-confessed grafter whom crusade after crusade had
failed to dislodge from absolute power. The crowds upon the street
snapped eagerly at that huge portrait and searched as eagerly through
the paper for more about the Boss. They did not find it, except upon
the editorial page, where, in the space usually devoted to drivel
about "How Kind We Should Be to Dumb Animals," and "Why Fathers Should
Confide More in Their Sons," appeared in black type a paraphrase of
the legend on the outside: "_Sam Stone Must Leave Town._" Beneath was
the additional information: "Further issues of the _Bulletin_ will
tell why." Above and below this was nothing but startlingly white
blank paper, two solid columns of it up and down the page.

Down in the deep basement of the _Bulletin_, the big three-deck
presses, two of which had been standing idle since the last
presidential election, were pounding out copies by the thousand, while
grimy pressmen, blackened with ink, perspired most happily.

By five o'clock, men and even girls, pouring from their offices, and
laborers coming from work, had all heard of it, and on the street the
bold defiance created first a gasp and then a smile. Another attempt
to dislodge Sam Stone was, in the light of previous efforts, a
laughable thing to contemplate; and yet it was interesting.

In the office of the _Bulletin_ it was a gleeful occasion. Nonchalant
reporters sat down with that amazing front page spread out before
them, studied the brutal face of Stone and chuckled cynically. Lean
Doc Miller, "assistant city editor," or rather head copy reader, lit
one cigarette from the stub of another and observed, to nobody in
particular but to everybody in general:

"I can see where we all contribute for a beautiful Gates Ajar floral
piece for one Robert Burnit;" whereupon fat "Bugs" Roach, "handling
copy" across the table from him, inquired:

"Do you suppose the new boss really has this much nerve, or is he just
a damned fool?"

"Stone won't do a thing to _him_!" ingratiatingly observed a "cub"
reporter, laying down twelve pages of "copy" about a man who had
almost been burglarized.

"Look here, you Greenleaf Whittier S