A sandy-haired youth-of-all-work, named Rivers, spent his days in the box we called the front office; a kind of lobby really, by which one entered the tolerably large and desperately untidy room in which Blaine and myself compiled each issue of The Mass. Blaine spent a good slice of all his days in keeping appointments, usually in Fleet Street bars.
My days were spent in the main office of the paper, among the files, the scissors and paste, the books of reference, and the three Gargantuan waste-paper baskets. Here at different times I interviewed men of every European nationality and every known calling, besides innumerable followers of no recognized trade or profession. Among them all I cannot call to mind more than two or three who, by the most charitable stretch of imagination, could have been called gentlemen.
Most of them were obviously, and in all ways seedy, shady characters—furtive, wordy creatures, full of vague, involved grievances. The greater proportion were foreigners; scallywags from the mean streets of every Continental capital; men familiar with prisons; men who talked of the fraternity of labour, and never did any work; men full of windy plans for the enrichment of humanity, who themselves must always borrow and never repay—money, food, shelter, and the other things for which honest folk give their labour.
If an English Cabinet Minister had offered us an explanation of any political development we should have had small use for his contribution in The Mass, unless as an advertisement of our importance. For their teaching, for the text they gave us in our fulminations, we greatly preferred the rancorous and generally scurrilous vapourings of some unknown alien dumped upon our shores for the relief and benefit of his own country.
We wanted no information from Admiralty Lords about the Navy, from commanding officers about the Army, from pro-Consuls about the Colonies, or from the Foreign Office about foreign relations. But a deserter or a man dismissed from either of the Services, a broker ne'er-do-well rejected as unfit by one of the Colonies, or a foreign agitator with stories to tell of Britain's duplicity abroad; these were all welcome fish for our net, and folk whom it was my duty to receive with respectful attention. From their perjured lips it became my mechanical duty to extract and publish wisdom for the use of our readers in the guidance of their lives and the exercise of their rights as citizens and ratepayers. I became adept at the work, and in the end accomplished it daily without interest, and with only occasional qualms of conscience. It was my living.
On a sunshiny morning in June, which I remember very well, the sandy-haired Rivers brought me a visiting-card upon which I read the name of "Miss Constance Grey." In one corner of the card the words "Cape Town" had been crossed out and a London address written over them.
I was engaged at the time with a large, pale, fat man from Stettin, whose mission it was to show me that the socialist working men of the Fatherland dearly loved their comrades in England, and that the paying of taxes for the defence of these islands was a preposterously absurd thing, for the reason that the Socialists would never allow Germany to go to war with England or with any other country. "The Destroyers," in their truckling to Demos, had already cut down Naval and Army estimates by more than one-half since their rise to power, and our Stettin ambassador was priming me regarding a demand for further reductions, prior to actual disarmament, to provide funds for the fixing of a minimum day's pay and a maximum day's work.
"Rivers ushered in Miss Constance Grey"
The gentleman from Stettin was to provide us with material for a special article and a leading article. His proposals were to be made a "feature." However, I thought I had gone far enough with him at this time; and so, looking from his pendulous jowl to the card in my hand, I told Rivers to ask the lady to wait for two minutes, and to say that I would see her then. I remember Herr Mitmann found the occasion opportune for the airing of what I suppose he would have called his sense of humour. His English and his front teeth were equally badly broken, and his taste in jokes was almost as swinishly gross as his appearance. But I was able to be quit of him at length, and then Rivers ushered in Miss Constance Grey.