two
uproarious and imbecilic vulgarians, Bonehead and Buttinsky.

Children cried for them, and laughed to exhaustion over them. Not less
did the mentally exhausted business man writhe abdominally over their
appeal. Spread across the top of three pages they wrung the profitable
belly-laugh from growing thousands of new readers. If Banneker sometimes
had misgivings that the educational influence of The Patriot was not
notably improved by all this instigation of crime and immorality made
subject for mirth in the mind of developing youth, he stifled them in
the thought of increased reading public for his own columns.
Furthermore, it was not his newspaper, anyway.

But the editorial page was still peculiarly his own, and with that
clarity of view which he never permitted personal considerations to
prejudice, Banneker perceived that it was falling below pitch. Or,
rather, that, while it remained static, the rest of the paper, under the
stimulus of Severance, Capron, Sheffer, and, in the background but
increasingly though subtly assertive, Marrineal, had raised its level of
excitation. Change his editorials he would not. Nor was there need; the
response to them was too widespread and fervent, their following too
blindly fanatic, the opposition roused by them too furious to permit of
any doubt as to their effectiveness. But that portion of the page not
taken up by his writings and the cartoon (which was often based upon an
idea supplied by him), was susceptible of alteration, of keying-up.
Casting about him for the popular note, the circus appeal, he started a
"signed-article" department of editorial contributions to which he
invited any and all persons of prominence in whatever line. The lure of
that universal egotism which loves to see itself in the public eye
secured a surprising number of names. Propagandists were quick to
appreciate the opportunity of The Patriot's wide circulation for
furthering their designs, selfish or altruistic. To such desirables as
could not be caught by other lures, Banneker offered generous payment.

It was on this latter basis that he secured a prize, in the person of
the Reverend George Bland, ex-revivalist, ex-author of pious stories for
the young, skilled dealer in truisms, in wordy platitudes couched
largely in plagiarized language from the poets and essayists, in all the
pseudo-religious slickeries wherewith men's souls are so easily lulled
into self-satisfaction. The Good, the True, the