Midsummer in the bureau always saw the staff in the midst of their Christmas literature, which, like its other anniversary material, was made up into pages, with a generous sprinkling of highly appropriate pictures of snow scenes and swinging bells and smiling Santa Clauses. Year after year these same pictures were taken down from their dusty shelves, and then year after year were duly stored away again for another season's use. Summer fiction, in the same way, was always manufactured during the winter months, by writers crouching forlornly over cheerless little gas-heaters. The bureau possessed a couple of "hands" surprisingly expert at this novelette work, who labored with the assistance of the back numbers of the less prominent magazines, and seemed possessed of the pleasing thought that what the world most loved was an old friend in new clothes. One of Hartley's first lessons--and there were many of them to be learned--had been that no article, editorial, or story must "slop over." This phrase was interpreted to him as meaning that no article must be one line longer than the strictly allotted space. If such proved the case the editorial blue pencil performed the necessary amputation, and the child of the expansive mind was crowded into its page sadly bereft of limbs, and often enough of all genuine sense and coherence. Hartley had acquired the art, too, of writing poetry to order, suitable for the bureau's stock illustrations, while the compositor waited at his elbow, with his make-up suspended until the necessary lines were duly indited. The young scholar from Oxford had been not a little amused, in secret, at the duties of the person who was known as the comic editor. The chief task of this editor seemed to be a ruthless scalping of the foreign humorous weeklies and a conscientious and often laborious adjustment of the witticisms of Punch to the American understanding. He was equally amused to find that the Republican editor and the Democratic editor were one and the same person, a mild-mannered and kindly faced old gentleman in a faded green suit, who on alternate days furiously wrote the most scathing political leaders back at himself.