And on the following day, he bore the news of the first attack to his chief.
“Boss, prepare! The blow has fell!” he proclaimed tragically.
“Who’s been denouncing us now?”
“Worse. We’re excommunicated. The Deutscher Club has expelled the paper from its sacred precincts. Out we go, lock, stock, and barrel: bell, book, and candle. Two whole copies lost to circulation at one swoop.”
“Mild, Andy, mild! Verrall’s got a list of thirty-seven quits by this morning’s mail. He’ll die of heart-failure superinduced by bad circulation if you and I don’t stop running this paper into the ground.”
“Verrall’s an earnest soul,” observed the general manager, “but he’s always on the borderland of hysteria, and if an advertiser looks cross at him, over he flops.”
“Yes. He had an ‘attack’ this morning. Blasius is out.”
“Entirely?”
“Five inches double; three times a week. Gone glimmering into the jaws of Hun ruthlessness.”
“Any one else?”