"But, really, Bolton, don't you think that it is treating our modern society as children, to fall in with this extreme fashion of story-telling? It seems so childish to need pictures and stories for everything. Isn't your magazine strong enough to lead and form public taste instead of following it?"
"Well, if I owned my magazine I would try it," said Bolton. "But, you see, the Westerfords, while they give me carte blanche as to means to run it, expect of course that it is to be run in the approved popular grooves that the dear thoughtless ten million prefer. The people who lounge on beds after dinner are our audience, and there must be nothing wiser nor stronger than they can apprehend between sleeping and waking. We talk to a blasé, hurried, unreflecting, indolent generation, who want emotion and don't care for reason. Something sharp and spicy, something pungent and stinging—no matter what or whence. And now as they want this sort of thing, why not give it to them? Are there no other condiments for seasoning stories besides intrigues, lies, murders, and adulteries? And if the young and unreflecting will read stories shouldn't some of the thoughtful and reflecting make stories for them to read?"
"Of course they should, Q. E. D.," said Jim Fellows, touching the gas with a match, and sending a flare of light upon our conference. "But come, now, behold the last novelty of the season," said he, tossing two cards of invitation. "This is for us, as sons of the press and recording angels, to be present at Wat Sydney's grand blow-out next Tuesday. All the rank and fashion are to go. It is to be very select, and there are people who would give their eye-teeth for these cards, and can't get 'em. How do ye say, Old Man of the Mountain, will you go?"
"No," said Bolton; "not my line."
"Well, at all events, Hal has got to go. I promised the fair Alice that I'd bring him if I had to take him by the hair."
I had a great mind to decline. I thought in my heart it was not at all the wisest thing for me to go; but then, Amare et sapere vix Deo—I had never seen Sydney, and I had a restless desire to see him and Eva together—and I thought of forty good reasons why I should go.