"The Weekly Star of Hempfield," he said, "will remain an incorruptible exponent of American institutions. The people may cease to believe in God and the Constitution, but the Star will remain firm and staunch. We shed our blood upon the field of Antietam: we stand ready to shed it again—for the nation, the Grand Old Party, and the high protective tariff. Though beaten upon by stormy seas, we shall remain impregnable."
I cannot describe how impregnable the old Captain looked, standing there by Ed's desk, one clenched fist raised aloft. He was at his best, and his best was better than you will often find in these days.
But the old Captain could no more understand Ed Smith than Ed could understand him. He would rather have laid his right hand upon living coals of fire than to have taken what he considered a "dirty dollar" for advertising. And yet in his day, no man in Westmoreland County was a keener political manipulator than he. He had traded his influence quite simply and frankly for the public printing. Was it not the natural reward of the faithful party worker? Had he not stumped the state for Blaine? Had not congressmen come to his door with their hats in their hands offering him favours in exchange for his support? And he had travelled always on railroad passes, as was his due as an influential editor, and voted, when a member of the legislature, with sincere belief in the greatness of all captains of industry, for every railroad bill that came up.
But the idea of taking crude money for reading notices favourable to the electric lighting contract in Hempfield, or of publishing for payment the cards of Democrats—it was not in his lexicon. Times change, and the methods of men.
When the old Captain once got started on the freedom of the press he was hard to stop; but as he talked Ed's courage began to return, for he could never take the old Captain quite seriously. At the first pause he broke in with a faint attempt at jocularity.
"Who's editing this paper, anyway, Captain?"
The old Captain looked at him in astonishment.
"Why, I am," said he. "I've edited the Hempfield Star for thirty years."
I think he really believed it.
"And what is more," he continued, "the Star is about to part company with Ed Smith."