edness of the human mind for good. After that I set
out to visit various newspaper offices in the city. I have talked with
four managing and city editors since yesterday noon. I have their
viewpoints now, and know what motives animate them. I know what they
think. I know, in part, what the Express will have to meet--and how to
meet it."

Both men stared at her in blank amazement. Haynerd's jaw dropped as he
gazed. He had had a long apprenticeship in the newspaper field, but
never would he have dared attempt what this fearless girl had just
done.

"I have found out what news is," Carmen resumed. "It is wholly _a
human invention_! It is the published vagaries of the carnal mind. In
the yellow journal it is the red-inked, screaming report of the
tragedies of sin. I asked Mr. Fallom if he knew anything about mental
laws, and the terrible results of mental suggestion in his paper's
almost hourly heralding of murder, theft, and lust. But he only
laughed and said that the lurid reports of crime tended to keep people
alive to what was going on about them. He couldn't see that he was
making a terrible reality of every sort of evil, and holding it so
constantly before an ignorant, credulous world's eyes that little else
could be seen. The moral significance of his so-called news reports
had no meaning whatsoever for him!"

"Did you go to see Adams?" asked Haynerd, not believing that she would
have dared visit that journalistic demon.

"Yes," answered the girl, to his utter astonishment. "Mr. Adams said
he had no time for maudlin sentimentalism or petticoat sophistry. He
was in the business of collecting and disseminating news, and he
wanted that news to go _shrieking_ out of his office! Here is one of
his afternoon extras. You can see how the report of an Italian
wife-murder shrieks in red letters an inch high on the very first
page. But has Mr. Adams thereby seen and met his opportunity? Or has
he further prostituted journalism by this ignorant act?"

"The people want it, Carmen," said Hitt slowly, though his voice
seemed not to sound a real conviction.

"They do not!" cried Carmen, her eyes snapping. "If the church and the
press were not mortally and morally blind, they would see the deadly
destruction which they are accomplishing by shrieking from pulpit and
sanctum: 'Evil is real! Pietro Lasanni cuts his wife's throat! Evil is
real! Look, and be convinced!'"

"But, Carmen, while what you say is doubtless true, it mus