The Cub Reporter: The country should be told things straight from the shoulder.
The Master: It would get indigestion. Remember the boarding-house peas.
That was the Superman’s regular style, a terrible, Shakesperian manner.
As a result of the cerebral exhaustion produced by these intellectual labours, the Super was troubled with neurasthenia, and as a cure for his ailment he took glycerophosphate of lime with his meals and did gymnastics.
Manuel recalled having often heard in Doña Casiana’s boarding-house a sonorous voice bravely and untiringly counting the number of leg and arm flexions. Twenty-five ... twenty-six ... twenty-seven, until a hundred or more was reached. That Bayard of Callisthenics was none other than Langairiños.
The other two editors could not be likened unto Langairiños. González Parla, with that porter’s face of his, looked like a barbarian. He was brutally frank; he called a spade a spade, politicians leeches and the newspapers printed by Sánchez Gómez, the toads.
The other editor, Fresneda, outrivalled in finesse the most tactful and effeminate man that could be found in Madrid. He experienced a veritable delight in calling everybody Señor. Fresneda managed only by a miracle to keep alive. He spent his whole life starving, yet this roused no wrath in his soul.
In order to get Sampayo, proprietor of Los Debates, to pay them a few pesetas, González Parla and Fresneda were compelled to resort to all manner of expedients. The hope harbored by the pair, which was a credential obtained through the proprietary director, was never realized.
Manuel had heard so much talk about Sampayo that he was curious to make his acquaintance.