“I saw 'Ruddigore' the other evening,” said Sanford to his cronies, as they called for a second round of coffee. “There's a line in it that describes old Birdie fore, aft, and amidships. Something like this: 'He is that particular variety of good old man to whom the truth is always a refreshing novelty'.”
They complauded. Rightly or wrongly, these high-spirited and sophisticated young men had decided that Mr. Birdlip's naïveté was so refreshingly complete that it gave them an aesthetic pleasure to contemplate it. It had the exquisite beauty of any absolute perfection. Their employer's latest venture, which had been to pay $200,000 for the exclusive right to publish and syndicate the mysterious formulae of a leading Memory Course, had shocked them very greatly.
It touched them in a tender spot to know that there had been all that money lying round the office, unused, which was now to be squandered (as they put it) on charlatanry, when they felt that they might just as well have had some of it.
“The Old Man is always looking for some special stunt, and trying to discover someone on the outside,” said one. “He can't see the material right under his nose.”
“It's really rather pathetic: he's crazy to get out a great newspaper, but he hasn't the faintest idea how to do it.”
“Yes, give him credit for sincerity. It isn't just circulation he wants.”
“Circulation's easy enough, if that's what you're after. The three builders of circulation are Sordid, Sensational, and Sex—”
“And the greatest of these is Sex.”
“Oh, he's decent enough. He won't pander.”
“He panders to stupidity. He's fallen for this Memory bunk. And when he finds that's a flivver, he'll try something else, equally fatuous. He's making the old Lens ridiculous.”