er's hand that had set the strings vibrating to a new tune;
Severance had only raised the pitch, to the _n_th degree of
sensationalism. And, in so far as the editorial page gave him a lead,
the disciple was faithful to the principles and policies of his chief.
The practice of the news columns was always informed by a patently
defensible principle. It paeaned the virtues of the poor and lowly; it
howled for the blood of the wicked and the oppressor; it was strident
for morality, the sanctity of the home, chastity, thrift, sobriety, the
People, religion, American supremacy. As a corollary of these pious
standards it invariably took sides against wealth and power,
sentimentalized every woman who found her way into the public prints,
whether she had perpetrated a murder or endowed a hospital, simpered and
slavered over any "heart-interest story" of childhood ("blue-eyed tot
stuff" was the technical office term), and licked reprehensive but
gustful lips over divorce, adultery, and the sexual complications. It
peeped through keyholes of print at the sanctified doings of Society and
snarled while it groveled. All the shibboleths of a journalism which
respected neither itself, its purpose, nor its readers echoed from every
page. And this was the reflex of the work and thought of Errol Banneker,
who intimately respected himself, and his profession as expressed in
himself. There is much of the paradoxical in journalism--as, indeed, in
the life which it distortedly mirrors.

Every other newspaper in town caught the contagion; became by insensible
degrees more sensational and pornographic. The Patriot had started a
rag-time pace (based on the same fundamental instinct which the rhythm
of rag-time expresses, if the psychologists are correct) and the rest
must, perforce, adopt it. Such as lagged in this Harlot's Progress
suffered a loss of circulation, journalism's most condign penalty. For
there are certain appetites which, once stimulated, must be appeased.
Otherwise business wanes!

Out of conscious nothing, as represented by the now moribund News, there
was provoked one evening a large, round, middle-aged, smiling,
bespectacled apparition who named himself as Rudy Sheffer and invited
himself to a job. Marrineal had sent him to Severance, and Severance,
ever tactful, had brought him to Banneker. Russell Edmonds being called
in, the three sat in judgment upon the Big Idea which Mr. Sheffer had
brought with him and which was:

"G