om 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.
And first work is likely to be valuable chiefly as indication."

"I'll mail it to you. Before