Mightier than the Sword

t a journalist can possess—enthusiasm. There is no other profession i

ough his part, without the audience noticing he is listless; the barrister may lose his case; the artist may paint one bad picture—it is forgotten in the gallery of good ones; but the reporter must be always alert, always eager, always ready to adapt himself t

ps by the footmen and servants of those whom he went to see on some quite trivial matters; or[74] he could never find the man he went forth to seek. He went from private house to office, from office to club, in search of a city magnate one day, and failed in his quest, and, after hours of searching, he came back to The Day empty-handed, and Rivers said brusquely: "You'll have to try again at dinner-time. He's sure to be home at seven. We've got to have him to-night." And so he we

and Rivers never even mentioned the matter to him. But if The Sentinel, or any other paper, had cha

ropean interest visiting London, but the printed interview never said where the well-known person was to be found. And so this meant a weary round of hotels, and endless telephone calls, unti

as though he had been in the coal business all his life. So that when the interview was ended, Humphrey reeled out of the office, his mind and memory a tangle of half-understood facts, and wholly incapable of writing anything on the matter. Fortunately, when he got back, he fou

Bishop received Humphrey coldly in the hall of his house, and Humphrey noticed that the halls were hung with many texts reflecting Christian sentiments of love and hope and brotherhoo

rt, thick-set man, with a pear-shaped face, and brown eyes that held a quizzical look in them. It was the second time Humphrey had come into touch with Necki

talk?" aske

mphrey a

7

caressed his moustache. "Why didn't you make him talk?" asked Neckinger with a hint

had to come back and say that he had spoken, and write down what he said at your discretion. And if he would not speak, you had, in some mysterious manner, to force the words from his mouth. That was what puzzled Humphrey in the beginning. What was the magic key that th

that came to him, whenever he passed through the swing doors in the morning, and the commissionaire, superior person of impregnable dignity, condescended to nod to him. He loved the reporters' room,

o as to admit the full light of day. And when the full light of day shone, it showed an incredibly untidy room, with every desk littered with writing-paper, and newspapers, and even the floor thick with a slipshod carpet of printed matter. The desks were placed against the walls and round the room. Humphrey had n

showed in the covering—as an umbrella its use had long since gone, yet it still hung there. Nobody knew to whom it belonged. Nobody threw it away—it was a respected survival of so

uch for the reporters, Humphrey found, except when one of them—or[78] all of them—saved the paper from being beaten by its rivals, or caused the paper to beat its rivals. But in the ordinary course of events, the manager ignored the reporters; the sub-editors, in their hearts, regarded them as loafers and pitied their grammar and inaccuracy for official titles and initials of leading men; Neckinger never bothered much about them unless there was trouble in the air, while those distant people, the leader-writers, sometimes looked at them curiously, as one regards strange types. And yet,

apart from the reporters. Nothing seemed to matter to them: the greatest upheavals left their room undisturbed; football, cricket, racing, coursing and the giving of tips were their main interests, and though a king died or war was declared, they still held their own page, the full seven columns of it, so that

irt-sleeves and a black apron, was holding a black square of glass to the light, from which something shining was dripping. A pungent smell of iodoform filled Humphrey's nostrils. He knew the smell; it was intimately associated with the recollections of his youth, when he had dabbled in photography with a low-priced camera, usi

re each day was active with a different activity from th

the lip of each man, and neither of them glanced at the work of his fingers. They looked always at the printed proof, or the written copy held in a clip before them. This was the provincial wire room. They were tappin

es, and, at about seven o'clock every evening, his dinner. He was a gentle-mannered man, whose face told the time as clearly as a clock. From six to eight it was cheerful; when he began to frown it was nine o'clock; when he grew restless and spoke brusquely it was eleven;

Selsey seldom made any comment—he read it, marked it with a capital letter indicating whether its fate would be three lines, a paragraph, or its full length, and tossed it into a basket, whence it would be rescued by one of the sub-editors, who saw that the paragraphs, the punctuation and the

one the next morning. It throbbed with persistent business. The tape machines clicked out the news of the world

bout to be electrocuted, with a band over the top of his skull, ending in two receivers that fitted closely over his ears. His hands were free so that he could write, and through the glass Humphrey watched his mouth working violently un

question, and again he felt that delightful and mighty sensation of being in touch with the bones of life, as he realized that somew

his upper lip, the big vein down his forehead bulging like a thick piece of string with his perspiring exertions. H

He could not understand why they should elect, out of all the work in the world, to sit down at a table from six until one; to leave their homes—he assumed that they were comfortable—their firesides and their wives. They did not meet life as the reporters did; they had none of the glamour and the adventure of it, the work seemed to him to be unutterably stale and destructive. One o

e's words echoed in his ears

e who brought law-suits, who were born, married, divorced; who went bankrupt; who died; who left wills; stories of actors who played parts; of books that were written; of men who made speeches; of[83] banquets; of funerals—the little, grubby boys were handling the epitome of existence, and this great volume of throbbing life was merely paper with words scrawled over it to them.... It was only in after years that Humphrey himself perceived the significance and the meaning of the emotions

ilding, and then he marvelled, not that the small things he

hospitals, for the deductive mind of a reporter used to such things would have told him that where there is an omnibus wreck, there must be injury to life and limb, and the nearest hospitals would be able to verify the bald fact of an accident. But there was nobody who had sufficient leisure or inclination to teach Humphrey his business, and, perhaps it was all the better for him[84] that he should buy his lessons with experience. For he found that "runners'" tales, though th

spoke kindly as equal to equal; it might almost be said that, from his great height, he bent down, as it were, to meet Humphrey, with the air of a patron conferring benefits. He was not like the Easterham

he darkness, as though he expected to see the wooden streets of Whi

to know of anything like that if it was serious. I'd have to put

fe and limb by not using his notebook. And with that, he eased the chin-strap of his helmet with his fo

three of them were hard at it, but the rest were having their supper. A tall, spidery-looking man, with neatly parted fair hair and a

; he's in the composing-r

corridor," his

ters were hoisted upwards and distributed automatically into their places, and all the time the same business was being repeated again and again. The lines of type were set up in columns, seven of them to a page, and locked in an iron frame, and then they were taken to an inner room, where men pressed papier maché over the pages of type, so that every letter was moulded clearly on this substance. Then this "flong" was placed in a curved receptacle, and boiling lead was poured upon it, as on a mould, so that one had the page curved to fit the cylind

he "furniture"—the odd wedge-shaped pieces of wood which they used in Easterham to lock the type firmly in between the frames, was abandoned for a simpler contrivance in iron. And there were Selsey and Hargreave peering at the first pages of The Day in solid type, reading it from right to left, as one reads Hebrew, and suddenly Hargreave would say: "W

n letters squeezed into square frames—leaden letters that will be melted down on the morrow—type, and the whole paper to be printed, and trains for the delivery carts to catch, if[87] people would have papers before breakfast. And the aproned men brought

him. "Hullo, Quain ...

ent—" bega

Any good? Is it worth a conte

ccident worth speaking o

t away to haggle with the foreman over something. Nobody w

en running to and fro in aprons, taking surreptitious pinches of snuff, banging with mallets, carrying squares of type, proofs, battered tins of tea, ... running to and

" said Selsey, no

ep, the grey building shivered and trembled as if in agony, and there came up from the very roots of its being a deep roar, at first irregu