Seth replied, with some embarrassment, “No, I’m not a printer. I’ve come to be—to be—an editor.”
Tom’s manner changed in a twinkling from civility to extreme cordiality.
“Oh—ho! you’re the new man from Thessaly, eh? Jack Fairchild’s brother! By Jove! How are you, anyway? When did you get in? Where are you stopping?”
“I’m not stopping anywhere—unless it be this stairway here,” Seth replied, pointing to his carpetbag with a smile, for his companion’s cheerfulness was infectious. “I came in half an hour ago, and I scarcely knew where to go, or what to do first. I gather that you are connected with the Chronicle.”
“Well, I should remark!” said Tom, taking the bag up as he spoke. “Come along. We’ll have some supper down at Bismarck’s, and leave your grip there for the evening. We can call for it on our way home. You’ll stop with me to-night, you know. It ain’t a particularly fly place, but we’ll manage all right, I guess. And how’s Jack?”
In the delight of finding so genial a colleague, one, too, who had known and worked with his brother, Seth’s heart rose, as they walked down the street again. He had been more than a little dismayed at the prospect of meeting these unknown writers whose genius radiated in the columns of the Chronicle, and in whose company he was henceforth to labor. Especially had he been nervous lest he should not speak with sufficient correctness, and should shock their fastidious ears with idioms insensibly acquired in the back-country. It was a great relief to find that this gentleman was so easy in his conversation, not to say colloquial.
They stopped presently at a broad open door, flanked by wide windows, in which were displayed a variety of bright-tinted play bills, and two huge pictures of a goat confidently butting a small barrel. There was a steep pile of these little, dark-colored barrels on the sidewalk at the curb, from which came a curious smell of resin. As they entered, Seth discovered that this odor belonged to the whole place.
The interior was dark and, to the country youth’s eyes, unexpectedly vast. The floor was sprinkled with gray sand. An infinitude of small, circular oak tables, each surrounded with chairs, stretched out in every direction into the distant gloom. Away at the farther end of the place, somebody was banging furiously on a piano. In the middle distance, three elderly men sat smoking long pipes and playing dominoes, silently, save for the sharp clatter of the pieces. Nearer, three other men, seated about a table, were all roaring in German at the top of their lungs, pounding with their glasses on the resounding wood, and making the most excited and menacing gestures. While Seth stared at them, expecting momentarily to see the altercation develop into blows, he felt himself clutched by the arm, and heard Tom say:
“Bismarck, this is Mr. Fairchild, a new Chronicle man. You must use him as well as you do me.”
Seth turned and found himself shaking hands with an old German monstrous in girth, and at once fierce and comical in aspect, with short, upright gray hair, a huge yellowish-white moustache, and little piggish blue eyes nearly hidden from view by the wave of fat which rendered his great purple face as featureless as the bottom of a platter.