“You’ve met my son, of course, chief?” said the editor and publisher of the Chronicle.
“Sure!” replied Hodgins, with a gracious nod to the young man. “But I declare I shouldn’t have known him. He’s changed a whole lot since I saw him last. That was more’n ten years ago, I guess. Doin’ newspaper work in New York, ain’t you, sir?”
“He has been,” replied the elder Gale, with a proud look in the direction of the young man. “For several years, chief, my son has been a distinguished member of the staff of the New York Daily News. But he has resigned that position to come out here and help me run the Chronicle.”
“A very sensible idea,” said Hodgins. “But now, Mr. Gale, to get down to my business. I’m a little rushed[Pg 49] for time, so you’ll excuse me for bein’ brief. Have you—ahem!—seen to-day’s issue of the Bulletin?”
“Of course,” replied the elder Gale, with a deprecating smile. “I presume you are referring to those disgraceful pictures? They are an outrage!”
“They certainly are that,” growled Hodgins. “What would you advise me to do about them, Mr. Gale—to set myself right in the eyes of the public, I mean?”
Again Mr. Gale smiled deprecatingly. “I scarcely think there is any need to worry about that, chief. It isn’t likely that the public will pay any attention to anything that appears in our disreputable contemporary, the Bulletin.”
“They wouldn’t if they had any sense,” said the chief, scowling as he recalled his recent painful experience on the street. “But—ahem!—the public seems inclined to pay more attention to those confounded snapshots than you’d think, and I’ve got to do something to set myself right. That’s what I’ve come to see you about, Mr. Gale.”
“I guess that can be easily fixed,” said the editor, “I’ll run an editorial on the front page of to-morrow’s Chronicle, denouncing the Bulletin for publishing those pictures. I shall refer to it as a pictorial outrage against decency and a disgrace to journalism.”
“That’s what it is, all right,” muttered the chief, with an approving nod; “but will the public look at it that way?”