Samuel Hopkins Adams

“ All civilized Americans fear and love print; that is to say, Publicity, for which read Baal. They fear it for what it may do to them. They love and fawn on it for what it may do for them. It confers the boon of glory and launches the bolts of shame. Its favorites, made and anointed from day to day, are the blessed of their time. Those doomed by it are the outcasts. It sits in momentary judgment, and appeal from its decisions is too late to avail anything to its victims. A species of auto-juggernaut, with Marrineal at the wheel.”
“What rubbish!” said Miss Van Arsdale with amused scorn. ”

“ Banneker was annoyed at himself for flushing. “They disseminate news. We’ve got to have news, to carry on the world. Only a small fraction of it is—well, malodorous. Would you destroy the whole system because of one flaw? You’re not fair.”
“Fair? Of course I’m not. How should I be? No; I would not destroy the system. Merely deodorize it a bit. But I suppose the public likes the odors. It sniffs ’em up like—like Cyrano in the bake-shop. A marvelous institution, the public which you and I serve. Have you ever thought of magazine work, Mr. Banneker?” ”

“ Io Eyre was one of those women before whom Scandal seems to lose its teeth if not its tongue. She had always assumed the superb attitude toward the world in which she moved. “They say?—What do they say?—Let them say!” might have been her device, too genuinely expressive of her to be consciously contemptuous. Where another might have suffered in reputation by constant companionship with a man as brilliant, as conspicuous, as phenomenal of career as Errol Banneker, Io passed on her chosen way, serene and scatheless. ”

“ Surely The Patriot ought to be making a greater profit than it showed, on its steadily waxing circulation. Why had he ever let himself be wrenched from his first and impregnable system of a straight payment on increase of circulation? Would it be possible to force Marrineal back into that agreement? No income was too great, surely, to recompense for such trouble of soul as The Patriot inflicted upon its editorial mouthpiece.... Through the murk of thoughts shot, golden-rayed, the vision of Io.
No world could be other than glorious in which she lived and loved him and was his. ”

“ Infinitely high, infinitely potent sounded the imminent tumult of the invisible Powers of the night, on whose sufferance they moved, tiny, obscure, and unharmed. It filled all the distances.
Debouching upon the open desert, they found their range of vision slightly expanded. They could dimly perceive each other. The horses drew closer together. With his flash covered by his poncho, Banneker consulted a compass and altered their course, for he wished to give the station, to which Gardner might have returned, a wide berth. Io moved up abreast of him as he stood, studying the needle. ”

“ Densmore smiled. “You!” he said contemptuously. “Kill, eh? Did you ever kill any one?”
“Yes.”
Under their jet brows Densmore’s eyes took on a peculiar look of intensity. “A Ledger reporter,” he murmured. “See here! Is your name Banneker, by any chance?”
“Yes.”
“You’re the man who cleared out the wharf-gang.”
“Yes.”
Densmore had been born and brought up in a cult to which courage is the basic, inclusive virtue for mankind, as chastity is for womankind. To his inground prejudice a man who was simply and unaffectedly brave must by that very fact be fine and admirable. ”

“ Banneker laughed. “Oh, Io! It’s such a relief to get a clear view and an honest one from some one else. There’s no one in the office except Russell Edmonds, and he’s away now.... You think McClintick is right? So do I.”
“But so are you. You had to do as you did about the story. If any one is to blame, it is Mr. Marrineal. Yet how can one blame him? He had to protect his mother. It’s a fearfully complicated phenomenon, a newspaper, isn’t it, Ban?”
“Io, the soul of man is simple and clear compared with the soul of a newspaper.” ”

“ Camilla Van Arsdale, even on so casual an acquaintance, would have told Io, reckoning with the slumbering fire in her eyes, and the sensitive and passionate turn of the lips, but still more with the subtle and significant emanation of a femininity as yet unawakened to itself, that for her to marry on the pallid expectancies of mere liking would be to invite disaster and challenge ruin. ”

“ Miss Van Arsdale pondered with troubled eyes. “I see what you mean,” she confessed. “But the discontent that arises within one’s self is one thing; the ‘divine discontent.’ It’s quite another to foment it for your own purposes in the souls of others.”
“That depends upon the purpose. If the purpose is to help the others, through making their discontent effective to something better, isn’t it justified?”
“But isn’t there always the danger of making a profession of discontent?”
“That’s a shrewd hit,” confessed Banneker. ”

“ About every three minutes he’d thrust out his hands and grab at the air and say, ‘Oh, brothers; don’t you yearn for Jesus?’”
“What has that to do with it?” questioned Io, surprised and impatient.
“Only that, somehow, the way you said ‘success in life’ made me think of him and his ‘yearn for Jesus.’”
“Errol Banneker,” said Io, amused in spite of her annoyance, “you are possessed of a familiar devil who betrays other people’s inner thoughts to you. Success is a species of religion to me, I suppose.” ”

“ Banneker, with one foot in the boat, gave a little shove and caught up his oars. An unseen hand of indeterminable might grasped the keel and moved them quietly, evenly, outward and forward, puppets given into the custody of the unregarding powers. Oars poised and ready, Ban sat with his back toward his passenger, facing watchfully downstream.
Leaning back into the curve of the bow, Io gave herself up to the pulsing sweep of the night. Far, far above her stirred a cosmic tumult. The air might have been filled with vast wings, invisible and incessant in the night of wonders. ”

“ Of that editorial, composed upon the unpromising theme of mail-order merchandising, the Great Gaines afterward said that it was a kaleidoscopic panorama set moving to the harmonic undertones of a song of winds and waters, of passion and the inner meanings of life, as if Shelley had rhapsodized a catalogue into poetic being and glorious significance. He said it was foolish to edit a magazine when one couldn’t trust a cheap newspaper not to come flaming forth into literature which turned one’s most conscientious and aspiring efforts into tinsel. ”

“ The lonely station of Manzanita stood out, sharp and unsightly, in the keen February sunlight. A mile away in a dip of the desert, lay the town, a sorry sprawl of frame buildings, patternless save for the one main street, which promptly lost itself at either end in a maze of cholla, prickly pear, and the lovely, golden-glowing roseo. Far as the eye could see, the waste was spangled with vivid hues, for the rare rains had come, and all the cacti were in joyous bloom, from the scarlet stain of the ocatilla to the pale, dream-flower of the yucca. ”

“ Everything you print, everything you withhold, may have incalculable influence on the minds of men. You can corrupt or enlighten them with a word. Think of it! Under such a weight Atlas would be crushed. There was a time long ago—about the time when you were born—when I thought that I might be a journalist; thought it lightly. To-day, knowing what I know, I should be terrified to attempt it for a week, a day! I tell you, Banneker, one who moulds the people’s beliefs ought to have the wisdom of a sage and the inspiration of a prophet and the selflessness of a martyr. ”

“ The smoke of his minute pipe went up, tenuous and graceful, incense devoted to the unseen God behind the strangely patterned curtain of print; to Baal who was perhaps even then grinning down upon his unsuspecting worshipers.
But Banneker, moving purposefully amidst that vast phantasmagoria of pulsing print, wherein all was magnified, distorted, perverted to the claims of a gross and rabid public appetite, dreamed his pure, untainted dream; the conception of his newspaper as a voice potent enough to reach and move all; dominant enough to impose its underlying ideal ”

“ Bang! It was a musical detonation, followed by a volley of chords and then a wild, swirling waltz; and Miss Van Arsdale jumped up and stood over her guest. “There!” she said. “That’s better than letting you pamper yourself with the indulgence of unhappiness.”
“But I want to be unhappy,” pouted Io. “I want to be pampered.”
“Naturally. You always will be, I expect, as long as there are men in the world to do your bidding. However, I must see to supper.”
So for two days Io Welland lolled and lazed and listened to Miss Van Arsdale’s music, or read, or took little walks between showers. ”

“ Io sat, not frightened so much as wondering. Her body ached in sympathy with the panting, racking toil of the man at the oars, the labor of an indomitable pigmy, striving to thwart a giant’s will. Suddenly he shouted. The boat spun. Something low and a shade blacker than the dull murk about them, with a white, whispering ripple at its edge, loomed. The boat’s prow drove into soft mud as Banneker, all but knocking her overboard in his dash, plunged to the land and with one powerful lift, brought boat and cargo to safety. ”

“ To which of scores of crowding purposes could Banneker best put the time? In his offhand way the instructive Mallory had suggested that he familiarize himself with the topography and travel-routes of the Island of Manhattan. Indefatigably he set about doing this; wandering from water-front to water-front, invading tenements, eating at queer, Englishless restaurants, picking up chance acquaintance with chauffeurs, peddlers, street-fakers, park-bench loiterers; all that drifting and iridescent scum of life which variegates the surface above the depths. ”

“ Betty Raleigh, looking up from a seat where she sat talking to a squat and sensual-looking man, a dweller in the high places and cool serenities of advanced mathematics whom jocular-minded Nature had misdowered with the face of a satyr, interposed the suave candor of her voice. “I actually lick my lips over your editorials even where I least agree with them. But the rest of the paper—Oh, dear! It screeches.”
“Modern life is such a din that one has to screech to be heard above it,” said Banneker pleasantly. ”

“ Invalidism was certainly not suggested in her erect bearing and serene face as she moved about her stateroom setting in order the books, magazines, flowers, and candy, with which Banneker had sought to fortify her against the tedium of the trip. As the time for departure drew near, they fell into and effortfully maintained that meaningless, banal, and jerky talk which is the inevitable concomitant of long partings between people who, really caring for each other, can find nothing but commonplaces wherewith to ease their stress of mind. Miss Van Arsdale’s common sense came to the rescue. ”

“ Van Cleve, oldest in standing of any of the staff, approached Banneker with a grave face and solemn warnings. To leave The Ledger was to depart forever from the odor of journalistic sanctity. No other office in town was endurable for a gentleman. Other editors treated their men like muckers. The worst assignment given out from The Ledger desk was a perfumed cinch in comparison with what the average city room dealt out. ”

“ While the choir was chanting, over the body of Willis Enderby, the solemn glory of Royce Melvin’s funeral hymn, the script of which had been found attached to his last statement, Banneker, speeding westward, was working out, in agony of soul, a great and patient penance, for his own long observance, planning the secret and tireless ritual through which Camilla Van Arsdale should keep intact her pure and long delayed happiness while her life endured. ”

“ Banneker was amazed. The choicest “made-to-measure” in his Universal Guide, “Snappy, fashionable, and up to the minute,” came to less than half of that.
His admiring eye fell upon his visitor’s bow-tie, faultless and underanged throughout the vicissitudes of that arduous day, and he yearned to know whether it was “made-up” or self-confected. Sears-Roebuck were severely impartial as between one practice and the other, offering a wide range in each variety. He inquired.
“Oh, tied it myself, of course,” returned Cressey. “Nobody wears the ready-made kind. It’s no trick to do it. ”

“ A clogging lassitude had descended upon her, the reaction of cumulative nervous stress, anesthetizing her will, her desires, her very limbs. She was purposeless, ambitionless, except to lie and rest and seek for some resolution of peace out of the tangled web wherein her own willfulness had involved her.
“The best possible thing,” said Camilla Van Arsdale. “I’ll write your people that you are staying on for a visit.”
“Yes; they won’t mind. They’re used to my vagaries. It’s awfully good of you.”
At noon came Banneker to see Miss Welland. ”

“ Why, what is there libelous in saying that a man claims to have been called by his first name by another man?” Banneker chuckled.
“Well, it ought to be libelous if it isn’t true,” asserted Io warmly. “It isn’t fair or decent that a newspaper can hold a man up as a boot-licker and toady, if he isn’t one, and yet not be held responsible for it.”
“Well, dearest, I didn’t make the libel laws. They’re hard enough as it is.” His thought turned momentarily to Ely Ives, the journalistic sandbag, and he felt a momentary qualm. “I don’t pretend to like everything about my job. ”

“ He, Banneker, would run any kind of a circus they wanted, to catch and hold their eyes; the sensational acts, the clowns of the funny pages, the blare of the bands, the motion, the color, and the spangles; all to beguile them into reading and eventually to thinking.
“But we haven’t worked it out yet, as we should. What I’m really aiming at is a saturated solution, as the chemists say: Not a saturated solution of circulation, for that isn’t possible, but a saturated solution of influence. If we can’t put The Patriot into every man’s house, we ought to be able to put it into every man’s mind. ”