got as far as, "The cry is still--"
when I took him by the throat. I have done the State some service.

Our sub-editors' room is humming now: a low murmur of questions, rapid
orders, the rustle of paper, the quick alarum of telephones. Boys keep
bringing telegrams in orange envelopes. Each sub-editor is bent over his
little lot of news. One sorts out the speeches from bundles of flimsy.
The middle of Lloyd George's speech has got mixed up with Balfour's
peroration. If he left them mixed, would anyone be the less wise?
Perhaps the speakers might notice it, and that man from Wiltshire would
be sure to write saying he had always supported Mr. Balfour, and
heartily welcomed this fresh evidence of his consistency.

"Six columns speeches in already; how much?" asks the sub-editor.
"Column and quarter," comes answer from the head of the table, and the
cutting begins. Another sub-editor pieces together an interview about
the approaching comet. "Keep comet to three sticks," comes the order,
and the comet's perihelion is abbreviated. Another guts a blue-book on
prison statistics as savagely as though he were disembowelling the whole
criminal population.

There's the telephone ringing. "Hullo, hullo!" calls a sub-editor
quietly. "Who are you? Margate mystery? Go ahead. They've found the
corpse? All right. Keep it to a column, but send good story. Horrible
mutilations? Good. Glimpse the corpse yourself if you can. Yes. Send
full mutilations. Will call for them at eleven. Good-bye." "You doing
the Archbishop, Mr. Jones?" asks the head of the table. "Cup-tie at
Sunderland," answers Mr. Jones, and all the time the boys go in and out
with those orange-coloured bulletins of the world's health.

What's a man to do at night out here? Let's have a look at all these
posters displayed in front of the Free Library, where a few poor
creatures are still reading last night's news for the warmth. Next week
there's a concert of chamber-music in the Town Hall I suppose I might go
to that, just to "kill time" as they say. Think of a journalist wanting
to kill time! Or to kill anything but another fellow's "stuff," and
sometimes an editor! Then there's a boxing competition at the St. John's
Arms, and a subscription dance in the Nelson Rooms, and a lecture on
Dante, with illustrations from contemporary art, for working men and
women, at the Institute. Also there's something called the
Why-Be-Lonesome Club for promoting friendly social intercourse