l difference in aim."

"Aim?"

"They're writing at and for their owners; to make good with the boss.
I'm writing at my public."

"I believe you're right. It's more difficult, though, isn't it, to write
for a hundred thousand people than at one?"

"Not if you understand them from study at first hand, as I do. That's
why the other fellows are five or ten-thousand-dollar men," said
Banneker, quite without boastfulness "while I'm--"

"A fifty-thousand-dollar a year man," supplied Edmonds.

"Well, getting toward that figure. I'm on the target with the editorials
and I'm going to hold on it. But our news policy is different. We still
wobble there."

"What do you want! Look at the circulation. Isn't that good enough?"

"No. Every time I get into a street-car and see a passenger reading some
other paper, I feel that we've missed fire," returned Banneker
inexorably. "Pop, did you ever see an actress make up?"

"I've a general notion of the process."

"Find me a man who can make up news ready and rouged to go before the
daily footlights as an actress makes up her face."

The veteran grunted. "Not to be found on Park Row."

"Probably not. Park Row is too deadly conventional."

One might suppose that the environment of religious journalism would be
equally conventional. Yet it was from this department that the "find"
eventually came, conducted by Edmonds. Edgar Severance, ten years older
than Banneker, impressed the guiding spirit of The Patriot at first
sight with a sense of inner certitude and serenity not in the least
impaired by his shabbiness which had the redeeming merit of being clean.

"You're not a newspaper man?" said Banneker after the introduction.
"What are you?"

"I'm a prostitute," answered the other equably.

Banneker smiled. "Where have you practiced your profession?"

"As assistant editor of Guidance. I write the blasphemous editorials
which are so highly regarded by the sweetly simple souls that make up
our _clientele_; the ones which weekly give gratuitous advice to God."

"Did Mr. Edmonds find you there?"

"No," put in the veteran; "I traced him down through some popular
scientific stuff in the Boston Sunday Star."

"Fake, all of it," proffered Severance. "Otherwise it wouldn't be
popular."

"Is that your creed of journalism?" asked Banneker curiously.

"Largely."

"Why come to The Patriot, then? It isn't ours."

Severance raised his fine eyebrows, but contented himself with saying