And you see it there?"

"Plain as Brooklyn Bridge. He'll eat mud like the rest of us."

"Come off, Pop! Where do you come in to eat mud? You've got the
creamiest job on Park Row. You never have to do anything that a railroad
president need shy at."

This was nearly true. Edmonds, who in his thirty years of service had
filled almost every conceivable position from police headquarters
reporter to managing editor, had now reverted to the phase for which the
ink-spot had marked him, and was again a reporter; a sort of
super-reporter, spending much of his time out around the country on
important projects either of news, or of that special information
necessary to a great daily, which does not always appear as news, but
which may define, determine, or alter news and editorial policies.

Of him it was said on Park Row, and not without reason, that he was
bigger than his paper, which screened him behind a traditional principle
of anonymity, for The Courier was of the second rank in metropolitan
journalism and wavered between an indigenous Bourbonism and a desire to
be thought progressive. The veteran's own creed was frankly socialistic;
but in the Fabian phase. His was a patient philosophy, content with slow
progress; but upon one point he was a passionate enthusiast. He believed
in the widest possible scope of education, and in the fundamental duty
of the press to stimulate it.

"We'll get the Social Revolution just as soon as we're educated up to
it," he was wont to declare. "If we get it before then, it'll be a worse
hash than capitalism. So let's go slow and learn."

For such a mind to be contributing to an organ of The Courier type might
seem anomalous. Often Edmonds accused himself of shameful compromise;
the kind of compromise constantly necessary to hold his place. Yet it
was not any consideration of self-interest that bound him. He could have
commanded higher pay in half a dozen open positions. Or, he could have
afforded to retire, and write as he chose, for he had been a shrewd
investor with wide opportunities. What really held him was his ability
to forward almost imperceptibly through the kind of news political and
industrial, which he, above all other journalists of his day, was able
to determine and analyze, the radical projects dear to his heart.
Nothing could have had a more titillating appeal to his sardonic humor
than the furious editorial refutations in The Courier, of facts and
tendencies plainly enunc