There came a brief quarter of an hour in the afternoon when what seemed to the novice a state of the wildest excitement reigned in the editorial room. An inky boy in a huge leather apron dashed from stall to stall shouting an interrogative “Thirty for you?” His master and patron, the foreman, also aproned from chin to knees, with shirt-sleeves rolled to the biceps, followed with the same mysterious question, put in an injured and indignant tone. A loud, sharp discussion between this magnate and Tyler, profanely dictatorial on the one side, profanely satirical on the other, rose suddenly and filled the room with its clamor. An elderly man, bald as a billiard ball, and dressed like a clergyman, came bounding up the stairs, pulling out his watch as he advanced, and demanding fiercely the reason for this delay. There was an outburst of explanation, in which four or five voices joined, mingling personal abuse freely with their analysis of the situation. Tom Watts leaped up the stairs four steps at a time and hurled himself into the controversy. Seth could distinguish in this babel of exclamations such phrases as-- “You better get some india-rubber chases!” “If that fire’s cut down, you might as well not go to press at all!” “If somebody would get down here in the morning, we could get our matter up in time.” “I’m sick and tired of getting out telegraph for these chuckle-headed printers to throw on the floor!” “That Mayhew matter’s been standing on the galleys so long already that it’s got grey-headed!” “By the Lord Harry, I’ll make a rule that the next time we miss the Wyoming mail it shall be taken out of your wages!” Here the inky boy galloped through to Seth with a proof-sheet, shouting, “You’ve got a minute and a half to read this in!” The bald, elderly gentleman, who seemed to be Mr. Workman, came and stood over Seth, watch in hand, scowling impatiently. Under this embarrassment the wet letters danced before his eyes, and he could find no errors, though it turned out later that he had passed “elephant” for “elopement” and ruined Watts’ chief sensation. A few minutes later, the clang of the presses in the basement shook the old building, and the inky boy bustled through the room again, pitching a paper into each of the stalls. There was a moment of silence, broken only by the soft rustling of the damp sheets. Then simultaneously from the several tables rose a chorus of violent objurgation. Seth heard the voice which he had learned was Samboye’s roar out, “What dash-dashed idiot has made me say ‘our martyr President Abraham Sinclair? ’ Stop the press!” There were other voices: “Here’s two lines of markets upside down!” “Oh, I say, this is _too_ bad. _Moyen age_ is ‘mayonaise ’ in my Shylock notice, and it’s Mrs. McCullough instead of Mr. --------.” “I’m dashed if the paper looks as if it had been read at all. We can’t have such proof-reading as this!”