, "get some heat in you! Squirt some
color into your way of looking at things! Be kind and good-natured in
your heart--just as I am at this moment--but for heaven's sake learn to
write as if you were mad, and only kept from yelling by phenomenal
will-power."

This was in early May. Many other talks upon the art of editorial
writing did the two have, as the days went. The Colonel, mystified but
pleased by revelations of actuality and life in his heretofore
too-embalmed assistant, found an increasing interest in developing him.
Here was a youth, with the qualities of potential great valuableness,
and the wise editor, as soon as this appeared, gave him his chance by
calling him off the fields of taxation and currency and assigning him to
topics plucked alive from the day's news.

On the fatal 15th of May, the Colonel told Queed merely that the _Post_
desired his work as long as it showed such promise as it now showed.
That was all the talk about the dismissal that ever took place between
them. The Colonel was no believer in fulsome praise for the young. But
to others he talked more freely, and this was how it happened that the
daughter of his old friend John Randolph Weyland knew that Mr. Queed was
slated for an early march upstairs.

For Queed the summer had been a swift and immensely busy one. To write
editorials that have a relation with everyday life, it gradually became
clear to him that the writer must himself have some such relation. In
June the Mercury Athletic Association had been thoroughly reorganized
and rejuvenated, and regular meets were held every Saturday night. At
Trainer Klinker's command, Queed had resolutely permitted himself to be
inducted into the Mercury; moreover, he made it a point of honor to
attend the Saturday night functions, where he had the ideal chance to
match his physical competence against that of other men. Early in the
sessions at the gymnasium, Buck had introduced his pupil to boxing-glove
and punching-bag, his own special passions, and now his orders ran that
the Doc should put on the gloves with any of the Mercuries that were
willing. Most of the Mercuries were willing, and on these early Saturday
nights, Stark's rocked with the falls of Dr. Queed. But under Klinker's
stern discipline, he was already acquiring something like a form. By
midsummer he had gained a small reputation for scientific precision
buttressed by invincible inability to learn when he was licked, and
autumn foun