"Everything else. Nobody cares a fig about how they played. Serve up something about the Johnnies themselves—something real interesting. That's the whole thing. Now, for instance, look at some of this other stuff," and Mr. Crothers took a chair close to Harvey, settling down to business; "here you have an item about a law being enforced by the Government, to provide that all dangerous lunatics must be confined in asylums. Don't you see what's the proper thing to say about that?"
"No," said Harvey. "It strikes me that's an occasion for saying mighty little."
"Nothing of the sort. It's a bully fine chance to say that this means the organ across the way will lose its editor. Everybody'll enjoy that, don't you see?"
"The editor won't," said Harvey.
"Of course, he won't—that's just the point. And here's another case—about the Hon. Mr. Worthing being struck by a street car. I notice you have him sitting up already. That won't do; a paper that cures them as quick as that won't be able to pay its office-boy soon. Of course, it's true enough, I dare say—he's probably playing billiards in his home, with a trained nurse answering the front door; like enough, he's sitting up all night going over his accident policies. But we've got to have him bandaged to the teeth—the public loves lots of arnica and sticking plaster—and he's struggling for consciousness—and he's got to be crying out every now and then as if he were being ground to powder; and his wife's going into swoons and coming out of them like a train running tunnels in the Rockies. Besides, we've got to lambaste the Company; the street-car line is our municipal assassin—Moloch—Juggernaut—all that sort of thing. But both those words should be in—and you can't use words like that if their victim's going to be down street to-morrow."
"You should have a staff of novelists," suggested Harvey.
"And here—here's a capital illustration of what I mean," Mr. Crothers hurried on, ignoring the innuendo. "I see Rev. Dr. Blakeley comes out with the announcement that there's no such place as hell—do you know what I'd say there, Simmons?"
"You'd say you had no objections, I should think," Harvey's face lighting with unfamiliar merriment.
"I wouldn't—the public doesn't care a tinker's malediction whether I object or not. There's a great chance there for a civic stroke—I'd say this information throws us back on Blankville," and Mr. Crothers named with much contempt a rival city fifty miles away. "It's little gems like that, that make a paper readable. I see a fellow in that same city was arrested for kissing girls on the street; then he was examined and found insane. Well, the thing to say there, is, that any one who had ever seen their girls would have known the man was crazy. News is like food, Simmons—everything depends on how it's prepared; nobody likes it raw."
"But what about that game with the Scotchmen?" Harvey ventured, inwardly rather chagrined with the verdict on his handiwork.