Common Cause: A Novel of the War in AmericaAdams, Samuel Hopkins
General
Common Cause: A Novel of the War in America
Adams, Samuel Hopkins
World War, 1914-1918 -- United States -- Fiction
But Jeremy Robson was making a newspaper to meet another, more
demanding, more changeful standard which was yet in a great measure the
same. He was making a newspaper for Jeremy Robson; for Jeremy Robson,
who, with a surprised and humble and hungry mind, was being educated by
that very newspaper which he himself was making. More and more Jeremy
Robson, editor of The Guardian, was identifying himself in mind and
spirit with Bill Smith and Jim Jones and their missises, readers and
followers of The Guardian. Because of that fellowship, because of the
implied link of faith and trust that had grown up, impalpable, between
them, evidenced in hundreds of letters to and scores of calls upon “the
editor,” there had been established standards to which The Guardian was
inviolably if tacitly committed. There were things which The Guardian
might not do. There were things which, when the time came, it might not
refrain from doing. An implicit faith was pledged. So and not otherwise
does a newspaper become an institution.
Yet The Guardian was Jeremy’s very own. He felt for it the proprietary
pride and interest of a man with a growing business and a growing
influence to wield, and, added to that the affection of a child for a
toy machine--which actually goes! He coddled his paper and petted it,
and treated it, when he could, to new and better equipment, and awoke
one day to the unpleasant realization that the editorials which he so
enjoyed writing, and the growing, widening response to which constituted
his most satisfactory reward, were physically a blotch and a blur and
an affront to the staggering and baffled eye. The Guardian needed a new
dress and needed it badly!
Now the garmenture of a newspaper is of a costliness to make Paquin,
Caillot, and their Parisian congeners of the golden needle appear like
unto ragpickers, when the bills come in. Jeremy bought The Guardian a
new dress of type. It made a hideous hole, a chasm, an abyss in the loan
negotiated from the Trust Company. But the paper became a festival to
the proud eye of its owner. Galpin helped salve his chief’s conscience
by agreeing that they would have had to do it sooner or later anyway.
Well advised of the loan, the status of the paper’s finances, and the
new plunge, Montrose Clark and his legal satellite, Judge Dana, held
consultation. Now, they decided, was the providentially appointed time
for trying out the transfer ordinance in the City Council. The Guardian,
whose opposition they had feared, had put itself in a position where it
must “be good.”
“That young cub,” said Montrose Clark confidently, “will have to come
into line.”
“With management. With careful management,” amended Judge Dana.
“Anyway!” returned the public utilitarian. “He’ll need every cent he
can get and when he sees five or six hundred dollars as his share of our
advertising campaign of education, with more to follow, he’ll take his
orders like the others. I’ll send for him in a day or two.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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