“I am the new owner of the Kicker,” Hollis informed him with a smile.
“Jim Hollis’s boy?” inquired Potter, straightening. At Hollis’s nod he stepped quickly forward and grasped the hand the latter offered him, squeezing it tightly. “Of course you are Jim Hollis’s boy!” he said, finishing his inspection. “You are the living image of him!” He swept his hand around toward the type case. “I am working, you see. Judge Graney wrote me last week that you wanted me and I came as soon as I could. Is it true that the Kicker is going to be a permanent institution?”
“The Kicker is here to stay!” Hollis informed him.
Potter’s face lighted with pleasure. “That’s bully!” he said. “That’s bully!”
He was of medium height, slender, lean faced, with a magnificent head, and a wealth of brown hair thickly streaked with silver. His thin lips were strong; his chin, though a trifle weak, was well formed; his eyes slightly bleared, but revealing, in spite of this defect, unmistakable intelligence. In the first flashing glance which Hollis had taken at him he had been aware that here was a person of more than ordinary mental ability and refinement. It was with a pang of pity that he remembered Judge Graney’s words to the effect that he was a good workman–“when sober.” Hollis felt genuinely sorry for him.
“I have had a talk with Judge Graney,” volunteered Potter. “He tells me that you are a newspaper man. Between us we ought to be able to get out a very respectable paper.”
“We will,” calmly announced Hollis; “and we’ll get the first issue out Saturday. Come in here and we’ll talk about it.”
He led the way to the front room and seated himself at the desk, motioning Potter to another chair. Within the next hour he knew all about the Kicker. It was a six-column sheet of four pages. The first page was devoted to local news. The second carried some local advertisements, exchange clippings, and two or three columns of syndicate plate matter. On the third page two columns were devoted to editorials, one to advertisements, and three to local news in large type. The fourth, and last page was filled with more plate matter and a litter of “foreign” advertising–patent-medicines, soaps, hair-dye.
At the first glance it appeared that the paper must be a paying proposition, for there were a goodly proportion of advertisements. Yet Hollis had his suspicions about the advertisements. When he had spoken to Potter about them he discovered that quite a number of them were what is known to the craft as “dead ads”–which meant advertisements upon which payment had ceased and which were carried either for the purpose of filling up the paper or because it was found cheaper to run them than to set type for the space which would be left by their absence.
“We won’t carry any dead ads!” announced Hollis.