When Mr. Briggs next entered the office he took my hand warmly in both his own, and said:
"I congratulate you. That paragraph of yours was the best editorial the Union has printed since I've been on the paper."
"Why, Mr. Briggs," I protested, "it was only a paragraph——"
"What of that?" he demanded in his most quarrelsome tone. "The Lord's Prayer is only a paragraph in comparison with some of the 'graces' I've heard distinguished clergymen get off at banquets by way of impressing their eloquence upon the oysters that were growing warm under the gaslights, while they solemnly prated."
"But there was nothing in the paragraph," I argued; "it only corrected an error."
"Why, sir, do you presume to tell me what is and what isn't in an article that I've read for myself? You're a novice, a greenhorn in this business. Don't undertake to instruct my judgment, sir. That paragraph was excellent editorial writing, because it corrected an error that did a great injustice; because it gave important and interesting information; because it set forth facts of public import not known to our readers generally, and finally, because you put that final period just where it belonged. Don't contradict me. Don't presume to argue the matter. I won't stand it."
With that he left the room as abruptly as he had entered it, and with the manner of a man who has quarreled and has put his antagonist down. I smilingly recalled the lines in which Lowell so aptly described and characterized him in "A Fable for Critics":
"There comes Harry Franco, and as he draws near,
You find that's a smile which you took for a sneer;