the
Legislature, which body gave no signs of ever having heard of them. Mr.
Queed's new series dealt authoritatively with "Currency Systems of the
World." He polished the systems off at the rate of three a week. But he
had asked and obtained permission to submit, also, voluntary
contributions on topics of his own choosing, and now for a fortnight
these offerings had died daily in Colonel Cowles's waste-basket.

As for his book, Queed could not bear to think of it in these days.
Deliberately he had put a winding-sheet about his heart's desire, and
laid it away in a drawer, until such time as he had indisputably
qualified himself to be editor of the _Post_. Having qualified, he could
open that drawer again, with a rushing access of stifled ardor, and
await the Colonel's demise; but to do this, he figured now, would take
him not less than two months and a half. Two months and a half wrenched
from the Schedule! That sacred bill of rights not merely corrupted, but
for a space nullified and cancelled! Yes, it was the ultimate sacrifice
that outraged pride of intellect had demanded; but the young man would
not flinch. And there were moments when Trainer Klinker was startled by
the close-shut misery of his face.

The Scriptorium had been degraded into a sickening school of journalism.
Day after day, night after night, Queed sat at his tiny table poring
over back files of the _Post_, examining Colonel Cowles's editorials as
a geologist examines a Silurian deposit. He analyzed, classified,
tabulated, computed averages, worked out underlying laws; and
gradually, with great travail--for the journalese language was to him as
Greek to another--he deduced from a thousand editorials a few broad
principles, somewhat as follows:--

1. That the Colonel dealt with a very wide range of concrete topics,
including many that appeared extremely trivial. (Whereas he, Queed, had
dealt almost exclusively with abstract principles, rarely taking
cognizance of any event that had happened later than 1850.)

2. That nearly all the Colonel's "best" articles--_i.e._, best-liked,
most popular: the kind that Major Brooke and Mr. Bylash, or even Miss
Miller, were apt to talk about at the supper-table--dealt with topics of
a purely local and ephemeral interest.

3. That the Colonel never went deeply or exhaustively into any group of
facts, but that, taking one broad simple hypothesis as his text, he
hammered that over and over, saying the same thing ag