Chapter XXVIII. Tell it Not in Oath - Page 2

and we want something more about it than mere writing, you know; a little about the man himself and his personal history, which Berkeley tells me you're well acquainted with. He's written something called "Gold and the Proletariate," or whatever it is; just tell our readers all about it. As to the leader, say what you like in it--of course I shall look over the proof, and tone it down a bit to suit the taste of our public--we appeal mainly to the mercantile middle class, I need hardly say; but you know the general policy of the paper, and you can just write what you think best, subject to subsequent editorial revision. Get to work at once, please, as the articles are wanted immediately, and send down slips as fast as they're written to the printers.'

Ernest could hardly contain his surprise at Mr. Lancaster's calmness under such unheard-of circumstances, when the whole laborious fabric of British liberties was tottering visibly to its base--but he wisely concluded to himself that the editor had to see articles written about every possible subject every evening--from a European convulsion to a fire at a theatre,--and that use must have made it in him a property of easiness. When a man's obliged to work himself up perpetually into a state of artificial excitement about every railway accident, explosion, shipwreck, earthquake, or volcanic eruption, in Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and the islands of the Pacific Ocean, why then, Ernest charitably said to himself, his sympathies must naturally end by getting a trifle callous, especially when he's such a very apathetic person to start with as this laconic editorial Lancaster. So he turned into the little bare box devoted to his temporary use, and began writing with perfectly unexampled and extraordinary rapidity at his leader and his article about the injured and martyred apostle of the slighted communistic religion.

It was only a few months since Ernest had, with vast toil and forethought, spun slowly out his maiden newspaper article on the Italian organ-boy, and now he found himself, to his own immense surprise, covering sheet after sheet of paper in feverish haste with a long account of Max Schurz's splendid life and labours, and with a really fervid and eloquent appeal to the English people not to suffer such a man as he to go helplessly and hopelessly to an English prison, at the bare bidding of a foreign despot. He never stopped for one moment to take thought, or to correct what he had written; in the excitement of the moment his pen travelled along over the paper as if inspired, and he found the words and thoughts thronging his brain almost faster than his lagging hand could suffice to give them visible embodiment. As each page was thrown off hurriedly, he sent it down, still pale and wet, to the printers in the office; and before two o'clock in the morning, he had full proofs of all he had written sent up to him for final correction. It was a stirring and