“I imagine his positiveness is the secret of his success.” Marian knew that Segur was half in jest and was fond of Howard. But she couldn’t endure hearing him criticised.
“No. I think he succeeds because he works, pushes straight on, never stops to repair blunders but never makes the same kind of a blunder the second time.”
Segur’s eye caught an item that suggested an editorial paragraph. He sat at Howard’s desk, thought a moment, scrawled half a dozen lines in a large ragged hand on a sheet of ruled yellow paper, and pressed an electric button. The boy came, handed him another thick bundle of proofs, took the “copy” and withdrew. Just then Howard returned.
“We’ll go down to the news-room,” he said.
The windows of the great news-room were thrown wide. Scores of electric lights made it bright. At the various desks or in the aisles were perhaps fifty men, most of them young, none of them beyond middle age. They were in every kind of clothing from the most fashionable summer attire to an old pair of cheap and stained duck trousers, collarless negligee shirt open all the way down the front and suspenders hanging about the hips.
Some were writing long-hand; others were pounding away at the typewriter; others were talking in undertones to “typists” taking dictation to the machine; others were reading “copy” and altering it with huge blue pencils which made apparently unreadable smears wherever they touched the paper. In and out skurried a dozen office-boys, responding to calls from various desks, bringing bundles of proofs, thrusting copy into boxes which instantly and noisily shot up through the ceiling.
It was a scene of confusion and furious activity. The face of each individual was calm and his motions by themselves were not excited. But taking all together and adding the tense, strained expression underneath the calm—the expression of the professional gambler—there was a total of active energy that was oppressive.
“We had a fire below us one night,” said Howard. “We are two hundred feet from the street and there were no fire escapes. We all thought it was good-bye. It was nearly half an hour before we found out that the smoke booming up the stairways and into this room had no danger behind it.”
“Gracious!” Mrs. Carnarvon shuddered and looked uneasily about.
“It’s perfectly safe,” Howard reassured her. “We’ve arranged things better since then. Besides, that fire demonstrated that the building was fireproof.”