I thought, perhaps," he snatched at this bright
new idea that had come to him just in the nick of time; "that I might
help you by my cartoons in the _Telegraph_; that is, I might keep them
from being as bad as they might--"

"But that wouldn't be dealing fairly with your new employers, Neil," the
mayor said.

Kittrell was making more and more a mess of this whole miserable
business, and he was basely glad when they reached the corner.

"Well, good-by, my boy," said the mayor, as they parted. "Remember me to
the little woman."

Kittrell watched him as he went on down the avenue, swinging along in
his free way, the broad felt hat he wore riding above all the other hats
in the throng that filled the sidewalk; and Kittrell sighed in deep
depression.

When he turned in his cartoon, Benson scanned it a moment, cocked his
head this side and that, puffed his briar pipe, and finally said:

"I'm afraid this is hardly up to you. This figure of Clayton, here--it
hasn't got the stuff in it. You want to show him as he _is_. We want the
people to know what a four-flushing, hypocritical, demagogical
blatherskite he is--with all his rot about the people and their damned
rights!"

Benson was all unconscious of the inconsistency of having concern for a
people he so despised, and Kittrell did not observe it, either. He was
on the point of defending Clayton, but he restrained himself and
listened to Benson's suggestions. He remained at the office for two
hours, trying to change the cartoon to Benson's satisfaction, with a
growing hatred of the work and a disgust with himself that now and then
almost drove him to mad destruction. He felt like splashing the piece
with India ink, or ripping it with his knife. But he worked on, and
submitted it again. He had failed, of course; failed to express in it
that hatred of a class which Benson unconsciously disguised as a hatred
of Clayton, a hatred which Kittrell could not express because he did not
feel it; and he failed because art deserts her devotees when they are
false to truth.

"Well, it'll have to do," said Benson, as he looked it over; "but let's
have a little more to the next one. Damn it! I wish I could draw. I'd
cartoon the crook!"

In default of which ability, Benson set himself to write one of those
savage editorials in which he poured out on Clayton that venom of which
he seemed to have such an inexhaustible supply.

But on one point Benson was right: Kittrell was not up to