With Malice Toward None: With Charity for All.'"

"Worked to death. But I've never seen it on a newspaper. Shall I tell
Veltman to set it up in several styles so you may take your pick?"

"Yes. Let's start it in to-morrow."

That night Harrington Surtaine went to bed pondering on the strange
attitude of the newspaper mind toward so matter-of-fact a quality as
honesty; and he dreamed of a roomful of advertisers listening in sodden
silence to his own grandiloquent announcement, "Gentlemen: honesty is
the best policy," while, in a corner, McGuire Ellis and Max Veltman
clasped each other in an apoplectic agony of laughter.

On the following day the blatant cocks of the shrill "Clarion" stood
guard at either end of the paper's new golden text.

CHAPTER X

IN THE WAY OF TRADE

Dr. Surtaine sat in Little George's best chair, beaming upon the world.
By habit, the big man was out of his seat with his dime and nickel in
the bootblack's ready hand, almost coincidently with the final clip-clap
of the rhythmic process. But this morning he lingered, contemplating
with an unobtrusive scrutiny the occupant of the adjoining chair, a
small, angular, hard man, whose brick-red face was cut off in the
segment of an abrupt circle, formed by a low-jammed green hat. This
individual had just briskly bidden his bootblack "hurry it up" in a tone
which meant precisely what it said. The youth was doing so.

"George," said Dr. Surtaine, to the proprietor of the stand.

"Yas, suh."

"Were you ever in St. Jo, Missouri?"

"Yas, suh, Doctah Suhtaine; oncet."

"For long?"

"No, suh."

"Didn't live there, did you?"

"No, suh."

"George," said his interlocutor impressively, "you're lucky."

"Yas, suh," agreed the negro with a noncommittal grin.

"While you can buy accommodations in a graveyard or break into a
penitentiary, don't you ever live in St. Jo Missouri, George."

The man in the adjacent seat half turned toward Dr. Surtaine and looked
him up and down, with a freezing regard.

"It's the sink-hole and sewer-pipe of creation, George. They once
elected a chicken-thief mayor, and he resigned because the town was too
mean to live in. Ever know any folks there, George?"

"Don't have no mem'ry for 'em, Doctah."

"You're lucky again. They're the orneriest, lowest-down, minchin',
pinchin', pizen trash that ever tainted the sweet air of Heaven by
breathing it, George."

"You don' sesso, Doctah Suhtaine, suh."

"I do ses