“And I’ll square it with Bausch,” said Embree. His smile expanded and enfolded the other. “Better come hear me speak to-night. I ‘ll have something to say about The Guardian. Watch the effect of the spread of the gospel for the next few days.”
The one brief reference to the paper in Senator Embree’s address said little but implied much. Jeremy was inclined to be disappointed. He looked for no results. But the following day brought in thirty-seven new subscriptions, with others trailing in their wake at the rate of a dozen per day. Furthermore, a batch of letters to the editor urged upon him a more definite political stand, or invited (in one instance challenged) him to state his attitude regarding Embree and the new policies frankly. Since his taking over the paper, politics had been at slack tide in the State. Jeremy had wisely refrained from committing himself definitely. All his instinct was for independence of thought and speech. When the issues were cast, The Guardian would take its stand. But he had reckoned without that pervasive and acute political self-consciousness of the Middle West which expects every citizen to be definitely one thing or the other, and be it promptly! His tax editorials, he found, had already committed him in the general mind to the radical side. Whoever attacked the railroads was a Friend of the People. To be sure, Jeremy’s attack had been addressed to a few specific and flagrant instances; but the public does not discriminate finely. And Senator Embree’s word-of-mouth “gospel” had already premised for The Guardian a course which would considerably have surprised its proprietor.
That keen-scented legal prowler, Judge Selden Dana, became uneasy. Young Robson, he feared, was getting deep into “Smiling Mart’s” toils.
“It’s time we took a hand,” he warned Montrose Clark. “Don’t you think I’d better see Robson and have a talk with him?”
“I will do it myself,” said the public utilitarian. “I have had more experience than you in handling newspaper men.”
“All right. But—easy does it. Remember, this is no A. M. Wymett.”
“If it were, I should leave it entirely in your hands,” retorted the magnate.
Judge Dana left, reflecting pungently upon his employer’s capacity for unnecessarily disagreeable speeches.
“If he tries that on Robson he’ll get bumped, or I miss my guess,” he surmised, and found some satisfaction in the thought.
Nothing, however, could have been farther from the mind of President Clark. He purposed treating the young newspaper man kindly. Firmly, but kindly. Even benevolently. Point out to him the error he was committing: show him that he was unwittingly an enemy to civic interests and progress which could best be left to those equipped by experience and under Providence, for handling large affairs: indicate to him, delicately, wherein his own interests and those of his newspaper were consonant with the interests of such public benefactors as Montrose Clark and the P.-U. That was the way to handle a presumably reasonable young fellow with a property to consider! In his satisfied mind, the public utilitarian outlined the course of the conversation, with himself (naturally) as converser and his visitor contributing the antiphony of grateful assent. Summoning the hand-perfected private secretary, Mr. Clark entrusted to his reverent care a summons for Mr. Jeremy Robson.