“Then there ought to be some originality about it too,” said Tom Watts. “It is just as well to sling in some items of your own, I think, such as ‘There is a growing desire among the Baptists to have Bishops, like other people,’ or, ‘It is understood that at the coming Consistory the Pope will create seven new American Cardinals.’ That last is a particularly good point. Every once in a while, predict more Cardinals. It doesn’t hurt anybody, and it makes you solid when the thing does happen. There’s nothing like original news to show the influence of journalism. One morning, after the cakes had been bad for a week, heavy, sour or something else, I said to my landlady that I believed the fault must be in the buckwheat. She said no, she didn’t think so, for the flour looked very nice indeed. I put a line in ‘Local Glimpses’ that day, saying that unfortunately the buckwheat this year was of inferior quality, and the very next morning she apologised to me: said I was right; the buckwheat was bad; she had read so in the Chronicle. Can you imagine a nobler illustration of the power of the press?”
Seth looked attentively at the speaker, to see if he was joking, but there was no more evidence of mirth in his thin face than in the serious tone of his voice. None of the others laughed.
Mr. Samboye said some of the most remarkable things, at once humorous and highly original, and put in an elaborate frame of big unusual words. He was a huge man in frame, with an enormous head, bushy eyebrows, heavy whiskers, a ponderous manner, a tremendous voice—in fact seemed to Seth precisely the kind of man from whom delicate wit, and soft shading of phrases were not to be expected. He happened for the nonce to be in a complaisant mood, and was relaxing himself in the company of “his young men,” as he liked to call his colleagues. But ordinarily he was overbearing and arbitrary, and this had rankled so deeply in their minds that they listened with apathy, unresponsive, to his choicest sallies, and Watts even combated him, with scant courtesy it seemed to Seth.
To him this monologue of the Editor’s was a revelation. He had never heard such brilliant talk, such a wonderful mastery of words, such delicious humor. He drank it all in eagerly, and laughed aloud at its broader points—the more heartily, perhaps, because no one else smiled. This display of appreciation bore fruit after its kind. Before Mr. Samboye went he spoke some decidedly gracious words to Seth, saying among other things:
“However harshly we may be tempted by momentary stress of emotion to speak, always remember that we unitedly feel your fresh bucolic interest in things, your virginal capacity for admiration, and your pristine flush of enthusiasm for your work to be distinct acquisitions to the paper,” which Seth felt to be somewhat nonsensical, but still was grateful for.
After Mr. Samboye had gone, Tom Watts took occasion to warn him in an aside:
“Be careful how you appear to curry favor with Samboye before the other fellows. Oh, I know you didn’t think of it—but don’t laugh at his jokes. They’ll think you’re trying to climb over them, and they’ll be unpleasant to you, perhaps.”