"Let 'em imitate," returned Banneker indifferently. "Yes; they don't come very near to the original. It's a fundamental difference in style." "It's a fundamental difference in aim." "Aim?" "They're writing at and for their owners; to make good with the boss. I'm writing at my public." "I believe you're right. It's more difficult, though, isn't it, to write for a hundred thousand people than at one?" "Not if you understand them from study at first hand, as I do. That's why the other fellows are five or ten-thousand-dollar men," said Banneker, quite without boastfulness "while I'm--" "A fifty-thousand-dollar a year man," supplied Edmonds. "Well, getting toward that figure. I'm on the target with the editorials and I'm going to hold on it. But our news policy is different. We still wobble there." "What do you want! Look at the circulation. Isn't that good enough?" "No. Every time I get into a street-car and see a passenger reading some other paper, I feel that we've missed fire," returned Banneker inexorably. "Pop, did you ever see an actress make up?" "I've a general notion of the process." "Find me a man who can make up news ready and rouged to go before the daily footlights as an actress makes up her face." The veteran grunted. "Not to be found on Park Row." "Probably not. Park Row is too deadly conventional." One might suppose that the environment of religious journalism would be equally conventional. Yet it was from this department that the "find" eventually came, conducted by Edmonds. Edgar Severance, ten years older than Banneker, impressed the guiding spirit of The Patriot at first sight with a sense of inner certitude and serenity not in the least impaired by his shabbiness which had the redeeming merit of being clean. "You're not a newspaper man?" said Banneker after the introduction. "What are you?" "I'm a prostitute," answered the other equably. Banneker smiled. "Where have you practiced your profession?" "As assistant editor of Guidance. I write the blasphemous editorials which are so highly regarded by the sweetly simple souls that make up our _clientele_; the ones which weekly give gratuitous advice to God." "Did Mr. Edmonds find you there?" "No," put in the veteran; "I traced him down through some popular scientific stuff in the Boston Sunday Star." "Fake, all of it," proffered Severance. "Otherwise it wouldn't be popular." "Is that your creed of journalism?" asked Banneker curiously. "Largely." "Why come to The Patriot, then? It isn't ours." Severance raised his fine eyebrows, but contented himself with saying: "Isn't it? However, I didn't come. I was brought." He indicated Edmonds. "He gave me more ideas on news-dressing," said the veteran, "than I'd pick up in a century on the Row." "Ideas are what we're after. Where do you get yours, Mr. Severance, since you are not a practical newspaper man?" "From talking with people, and seeing what the newspapers fail to do."