The Card, a Story of Adventure in the Five TownsBennett, Arnold
General
The Card, a Story of Adventure in the Five Towns
Bennett, Arnold
Adventure stories; City and town life -- Fiction; Staffordshire (England) -- Fiction
Then came the announcement of the thirty-fifth anniversary of
the _Signal_, and of the processional _fête_ by which the
_Signal_ was at once to give itself a splendid spectacular
advertisement and to reward and enhearten its boys. The _Signal_
meant to liven up the streets of the Five Towns on that great day by
means of a display of all the gilt chariots of Snape's Circus in the
main thoroughfare. Many of the boys would be in the gilt chariots.
Copies of the anniversary number of the _Signal_ would be sold from
the gilt chariots. The idea was excellent, and it showed that after all
the _Signal_ was getting just a little more afraid of its young
rival than it had pretended to be.
For, strange to say, after a trying period of hesitation, the _Five
Towns Daily_ was slightly on the upward curve--thanks to Denry. Denry
did not mean to be beaten by the puzzle which the _Daily_ offered
to his intelligence. There the _Daily_ was, full of news, and with
quite an encouraging show of advertisements, printed on real paper with
real ink--and yet it would not "go." Notoriously the _Signal_
earned a net profit of at the very least five thousand a year, whereas
the _Daily_ earned a net loss of at the very least sixty pounds a
week--and of that sixty quite a third was Denry's money. He could not
explain it. Mr Myson tried to rouse the public by passionately stirring
up extremely urgent matters--such as the smoke nuisance, the increase of
the rates, the park question, German competition, technical education
for apprentices; but the public obstinately would not be roused
concerning its highest welfare to the point of insisting on a regular
supply of the _Daily_. If a mere five thousand souls had positively
demanded daily a copy of the _Daily_ and not slept till boys or
agents had responded to their wish, the troubles of the _Daily_
would soon have vanished. But this ridiculous public did not seem to
care which paper was put into its hand in exchange for its halfpenny, so
long as the sporting news was put there. It simply was indifferent. It
failed to see the importance to such an immense district of having two
flourishing and mutually-opposing daily organs. The fundamental boy
difficulty remained ever present.
And it was the boy difficulty that Denry perseveringly and ingeniously
attacked, until at length the _Daily_ did indeed possess some sort
of a brigade of its own, and the bullying and slaughter in the streets
(so amusing to the inhabitants) grew a little less one-sided.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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