"A power. Oh, it's real enough, all this empire of words that crumbles daily. It leaves something behind, a little residue of thought, ideals, convictions. What do you fear for him?" "Cynicism," she breathed uneasily. "It's the curse of the game. But it doesn't get the worker who feels his work striking home." "Do you see any trace of cynicism in the paper?" asked Banneker curiously. "All this blaring and glaring and froth and distortion," she replied, sweeping her hand across the issue which lay on the desk before her. "Can you do that sort of thing and not become that sort of thing?" "Ask Edmonds," said Banneker. "Thirty years I've been in this business," said the veteran slowly. "I suppose there are few of its problems and perplexities that I haven't been up against. And I tell you, Miss Van Arsdale, all this froth and noise and sensationalism doesn't matter. It's an offense to taste, I know. But back of it is the big thing that we're trying to do; to enlist the ignorant and helpless and teach them to be less ignorant and helpless. If fostering the political ambitions of a Marrineal is part of the price, why, I'm willing to pay it, so long as the paper keeps straight and doesn't sell itself for bribe money. After all, Marrineal can ride to his goal only on our chariot. The Patriot is an institution now. You can't alter an institution, not essentially. You get committed to it, to the thing you've made yourself. Ban and I have made the new Patriot, not Marrineal. Even if he got rid of us, he couldn't change the paper; not for a long time and only very gradually. The following that we've built up would be too strong for him." "Isn't it too strong for you two?" asked the doubting woman-soul. "No. We understand it because we made it." "Frankenstein once said something like that," she murmured. "It isn't a monster," rumbled Edmonds. "Sometimes I think it's a toy dog, with Ban's ribbon around its cute little neck. I'll answer for Ban, Miss Van Arsdale." 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; confident enough of righteousness to be free of all silencing and control. That voice should supply the long unsatisfied hunger of the many for truth uncorrupted. It should enunciate straightly, simply, without reservation, the daily verities destined to build up the eternal structure. It should be a religion of seven days a week, set forth by a thousand devoted preachers for a million faithful hearers.