"But they can't quit printing his name, Quinlan!" exclaimed Drayton. "Mallard's news; he's the biggest figure in the news that there is to-day in this country." "That's the same foolish argument that the average newspaper man would make," said Quinlan scornfully. "Mallard is news because the newspapers make news of him--and for no other reason. Let them quit, and he isn't news any more--he's a nonentity, he's nothing at all, he's null and he's void. So far as public opinion goes he will cease to exist, and a thing that has ceased to exist is no longer news--once you've printed the funeral notice. Every popular thing, every conspicuous thing in the world is born of notoriety and fed on notoriety--newspaper notoriety. Notoriety is as essential to the object of notoriety itself as it is in fashioning the sentiments of those who read about it. And there's just one place where you can get wholesale, nation-wide notoriety to-day--out of the jaws of a printing press. "We call baseball our national pastime--granted! But let the newspapers, all of them, during one month of this coming spring, quit printing a word about baseball, and you'd see the parks closed up and the weeds growing on the base lines and the turnstiles rusting solid. You remember those deluded ladies who almost did the cause of suffrage some damage last year by picketing the White House and bothering the President when he was busy with the biggest job that any man had tackled in this country since Abe Lincoln? Remember how they raised such a hullabaloo when they were sent to the workhouse? Well, suppose the newspapers, instead of giving them front-page headlines and columns of space every day, had refused to print a line about them or even so much as to mention their names. Do you believe they would have stuck to the job week after week as they did stick to it? I tell you they'd have quit cold inside of forty-eight hours. "Son, your average latter-day martyr endures his captivity with fortitude because he knows the world, through the papers, is going to hear the pleasant clanking of his chains. Otherwise he'd burst from his cell with a disappointed yell and go out of the martyr business instanter. He may not fear the gallows or the stake or the pillory, but he certainly does love his press notices. He may or may not keep the faith, but you can bet he always keeps a scrapbook. Silence--that's the thing he fears more than hangman's nooses or firing squads. "And that's the cure for your friend, Jason Mallard, Esquire. Let the press of this country put the curse of silence on him and he's done for. Silence will kill off his cause and kill off his following and kill him off. It will kill him politically and figuratively. I'm not sure, knowing the man as I do, but what it will kill him actually. Entomb him in silence and he'll be a body of death and corruption in two weeks. Just let the newspapers and the magazines provide the grave, and the corpse will provide itself."