“You have no right at all to say that!” Seth answered hotly. “I believe firmly that the newspaper men of this country, considering their influence and the great temptation to make money out of it, are as honest a body of men as you can find in America. This conventional talk about their venality is the cruellest kind of libel, and if you knew them as I do you wouldn’t lend yourself to circulating it.” “Oh, I am not entirely without acquaintance in this white-winged profession of yours,” replied the lawyer, smilingly. “I know Mr. Mortimer Samboye, for example. I could tell you too, you confiding youngster, just his figure, and where the cheque, made payable to his wife, was cashed.” “If you do know about Samboye, you know what I believe to be the one exception to the rule in the State. I don’t for a moment believe that there is another editor whom your people could have bought. It is an odious exception, to be sure, but exceptions prove the rule. If journalists and journals were in the market, as you and your machine friends seem to imagine, there would be no such widespread bolt against your machine ticket to-day.” “Oh, you think so, do you?” The lawyer was getting vexed. He stood up, thrust his hands deep into his trowsers pockets, and spoke with more sharpness than before. “You think so! Why, man alive, this same d----d _Chronicle_ of yours has been in the market since before you were born. I bet you to-day that Workman would rather plank out five thousand dollars from his own pocket than let me cross-examine him in the witness box on his recollections of the _Chronicle’s_ record. Why, that is the very last paper in the State that has a title to throw stones! Do you want to know when this new reforming zeal of Workman’s was born? I can tell you. It was the day that another man (Dick Folts, if you wish names), was appointed to the Territorial Governorship that Workman wanted for his brother. So you thought it was only high morality and noble patriotic sentiments that ailed the _Chronicle_, did you? You never suspected that it was simply a bad case of brother--that it all happened because Samuel M. Workman of Toboggan was compelled to continue to adorn a private station? You think the world is run on kid-gloved, scriptural ethics? It reminds me of a novel I read here awhile ago. It set out to describe An American Politician--and in almost every scene in the book where he appeared, he was drinking tea in some lady’s drawing room, declaiming to the fair sex on how he was going to reform politics. He thought he was a deuce of a fellow, and so did the women and the author too. This politician was a good sample of all your reformers. I tell you, the men who go to afternoon teas in America, exert no more influence on American politics than--than a hen who was too refined to scratch in the barn-yard for worms would exert on the question of female suffrage. Now _don’t_ make a fool of yourself, Seth. Your predecessor, Samboye, was in no way your