American newspaper
humour or American newspaper tears, came in roaring pacifically and
marshaling little Bud, that day in the seventh heaven of his first
"beat." Then followed Crass, the feature man, whose interviews were
known to the new men as literature, although he was not above
publicly admitting that he was not a reporter, but a special writer.
Mr. Crass read nothing in the paper that he had not written, and St.
George had once prophesied that in old age he would use his
scrap-book for a manual of devotions, as Klopstock used his
_Messiah_. With him arrived Carbury, the telegraph editor, and later
Benfy, who had a carpet in his office and wrote editorials and who
came in evening clothes, thus moving Harding and Holt to instant
private conversation. The last to appear was Little Cawthorne who
wrote the fiction page and made enchanting limericks about every one
on the staff and went about singing one song and behaving, the
dramatic man flattered him, like a motif. Little Cawthorne entered
backward, wrestling with some wiry matter which, when he had
executed a manoeuvre and banged the door, was thrust through the
passage in the form of Bennie Todd, the head office boy,
affectionately known as Bennietod. Bennietod was in every one's
secret, clipped every one's space and knew every one's salary, and
he had lately covered a baseball game when the man whose copy he was
to carry had, outside the fence, become implicated in allurements.
He was greeted with noise, and St. George told him heartily that he
was glad he had come.

"He made me," defensively claimed Bennietod; frowning deferentially
at Little Cawthorne.

"Hello, St. George," said the latter, "come on back to the office.
Crass sits in your place and he wears cravats the colour of goblin's
blood. Come back."

"Not he," said Chillingworth, smoking; "the Dead-and-Done-with
editor is too keen for that; I won't give him a job. He's ruined.
Egg sandwiches will never stimulate him now."

St. George joined in the relieved laugh that followed. They were
remembering his young Sing Sing convict who had completed his
sentence in time to step in a cab and follow his mother to the
grave, where his stepfather refused to have her coffin opened. And
St. George, fresh from his Alma Mater, had weighted the winged words
of his story with allusions to the tears celestial of Thetis, shed
for Achilles, and Creon's grief for Haemon, and the Unnatural Combat
of Massinger's father a