Man reasons and seeks human counsel; but woman obeys her instincts. Carmen did this and more. Her life had been one of utter freedom from dependence upon human judgment. The burden of decision as to the wisdom of a course of action rested always upon her own thought. Never did she seek to make a fellow-being her conscience. When the day of judgment came, the hour of trial or vital demand, it found her standing boldly, because her love was made perfect, not through instinct alone, but through conformity with the certain knowledge that he who lacks wisdom may find it in the right thought of God and man. And so, when on the next day she joined Hitt and Haynerd in the office of the Social Era, and learned that Carlson had met their terms, eagerly, and had transferred to them the moribund Express, she had no qualms as to the wisdom of the step which they were taking.
But not so her companions. Haynerd was a composite picture of doubt and fear, as he sat humped up in his chair. Hitt was serious to the point of gloom, reflecting in a measure his companion’s dismal forebodings.
“I was scared to death for fear he wouldn’t sell,” Haynerd was saying as the girl entered; “and I was paralyzed whenever I thought that he would.”
Carmen laughed aloud when she heard these words. “Do you know,” she said, “you remind me of Lot’s wife. She was told to go ahead, along the right course. But she looked back––alas for her! Now you two being started right are looking back; and you are about to turn to salt tears!
“Now listen,” she continued, as Haynerd began to remonstrate; “don’t voice a single fear to me! You couldn’t make me believe them true even if you argued for weeks––and we 86 have no time for such foolishness now. The first thing that you have got to do, Ned, is to start a little cemetery. In it you must bury your fears, right away, and without any mourning. Put up little headstones, if you wish; but don’t ever go near the place afterward, excepting to plant the insults, and gibes, and denouncements, and vilifications which the human mind will hurl at you, once the Express starts out on its new career. Good is bound to stir up evil; and the Express is now in the business of good. Remember, the first thing the Apostles always did was to be afraid. And they kept Jesus busy pointing out the nothingness of their fears.”
“Business of good!” retorted Haynerd savagely. “I guess we’ll find ourselves a bit lonely in it, too!”
“True, humanly speaking,” replied the girl, taking a chair beside him. “But, Ned, let me tell you of the most startling thing I have found in this great, new country. It is this: you Americans have, oh, so much animal courage––and so little true moral courage! You know that the press is one of the most corrupt institutions in America, don’t you? The truth is not in it. Going into thousands of homes every day, it is a deadlier menace than yellow fever. You know that it is muzzled by so-called religious bodies, by liquor interests, by vice-politicians, by commercialism, and its own craven cowardice. And yet, Ned, despite your heart-longing, you dare not face the world and stand boldly for righteousness in the conduct of the Express!
“Now,” she went on hurriedly, “let me tell you more. While you have been debating with your fears as you awaited Mr. Carlson’s decision, I have been busy. If I had allowed my mentality to become filled with fear and worry, as you have done, I would have had no room for real, constructive thought. But I first thanked God for this grand opportunity to witness to Him; and then I put out every mental suggestion of failure, of malicious enmity from the world, and from those who think they do not love us, and with it every subtle argument about the unpreparedness of the human mind for good. After that I set out to visit various newspaper offices in the city. I have talked with four managing and city editors since yesterday noon. I have their viewpoints now, and know what motives animate them. I know what they think. I know, in part, what the Express will have to meet––and how to meet it.”
Both men stared at her in blank amazement. Haynerd’s jaw dropped as he gazed. He had had a long apprenticeship in the newspaper field, but never would he have dared attempt what this fearless girl had just done.
“I have found out what news is,” Carmen resumed. “It is 87 wholly a human invention! It is the published vagaries of the carnal mind. In the yellow journal it is the red-inked, screaming report of the tragedies of sin. I asked Mr. Fallom if he knew anything about mental laws, and the terrible results of mental suggestion in his paper’s almost hourly heralding of murder, theft, and lust. But he only laughed and said that the lurid reports of crime tended to keep people alive to what was going on about them. He couldn’t see that he was making a terrible reality of every sort of evil, and holding it so constantly before an ignorant, credulous world’s eyes that little else could be seen. The moral significance of his so-called news reports had no meaning whatsoever for him!”