CHAPTER VI

WHICH INTRODUCES AN EDITOR

WHEELTON, an industrial town of some importance, lies less than an
hour's journey by rail from Stratford. It is not exactly a home of
learning, nor has it given any distinguished men to literature or
science, but it boasts four weekly newspapers and a small daily sheet,
which would appear to be more than the inhabitants require in the shape
of local reading matter, for, with one exception, the newspapers of the
town have a hard struggle for existence.

At the time when Henry Charles and his father made their first journey
thither the journalistic conditions were not quite so straitened, as the
evening paper and one of the weeklies had not come to increase
competition; but even then the _Guardian_ was the least successful of
the three.

The office of Mr. Springthorpe's journal was situated up a flight of
narrow stairs, the shop on the street front having been let to a
pork-butcher for the sake of the rent. On the first floor were the
editor's room, the reporters' room, and another small apartment that
served as the general office, and contained a staff of one weedy young
man with downy side-whiskers, and a perky little office boy.

Up a further crazy stair the composing-room was reached, and here five
men and several boys put into type what was sent from the rooms below.
The printing was done in premises on the ground floor behind the
pork-butcher's, extended by the addition of a rather rickety wooden
outbuilding. By no means an establishment to impress a visitor with the
importance of the journal here produced, or to give a beginner any
exaggerated idea of the dignity of journalism. Still, the massive gilt
letters proclaiming THE GUARDIAN above the pork-butcher's had the power
to make Henry's blood tingle when first he saw them.

Up the stair he followed his father, with much fluttering of the heart,
but reassured by the confident and cheerful look on the face of Edward
John, who went about the business as outwardly calm as if he were buying
a fresh stock of stationery.

The office-boy showed the visitors into a room to the left of the
counter, on the door of which the pregnant word EDITOR, printed in bold
letters on a slip of paper, had been pasted but recently, judging by its
cleanness, as contrasted with the soiled appearance of everything else.

The editor's room was plainly furnished, not to say shabbily, despite
the fact that it figured fr