. Here we are in the midst of good times,
everywhere, and you talk about--what was the stuff?--oh, yes: 'The
grinning mask of prosperity, beneath which Want searches with haggard
and threatening eyes for the crust denied.' Fine stuff!"

"Not mine. I don't write as beautifully as all that. It's quoted from a
letter. But I'll take the responsibility, since I quoted it. There's
some truth in it, you know."

"Not a hair's-weight. If you fill the minds of the ignorant with that
sort of thing, where shall we end?"

"If you fill the minds of the ignorant, they will no longer be
ignorant."

"Then they'll be above their class and their work. Our whole trouble is
in that; people thinking they're too good for the sort of work they're
fitted for."

"Aren't they too good if they can think themselves into something
better?"

Poultney Masters delivered himself of a historical profundity. "The man
who first had the notion of teaching the mass of people to read will
have something to answer for."

"Destructive, isn't it?" said Banneker, looking up quickly.

"Now, you want to go farther. You want to teach 'em to think."

"Exactly. Why not?"

"Why not? Why, because, you young idiot, they'll think wrong."

"Very likely. At first. We all had to spell wrong before we spelled
right. What if people do think wrong? It's the thinking that's
important. Eventually they'll think right."

"With the newspapers to guide them?" There was a world of scorn in the
magnate's voice.

"Some will guide wrong. Some will guide right. The most I hope to do is
to teach 'em a little to use their minds. Education and a fair field. To
find out and to make clear what is found; that's the business of a
newspaper as I see it."

"Tittle-tattle. Tale-mongering," was Masters's contemptuous
qualification.

"A royal mission," laughed Banneker. "I call the Sage to witness. 'But
the glory of kings is to search out a matter.'"

"But they've got to be kings," retorted the other quickly. "It's a
tricky business, Banneker. Better go in for polo. We need you." He
lumbered away, morose and growling, but turned back to call over his
shoulder: "Read your own stuff when you get up to-morrow and see if polo
isn't a better game and a cleaner."

What the Great of the city might think of his journalistic achievement
troubled Banneker but little, so long as they thought of it at all,
thereby proving its influence; the general public was his sole arbiter,
except for