“I’ll be mighty glad to have it there, Mr. Blasius,” answered Jeremy heartily.
“I thank you. This that I have told you I say to the Deutscher Club at their meeting. And what do they do? They fire me out! That is, I think, strainch,” reflected the sturdy little hatter.
To Jeremy it did not seem “strainch.” Men like Professor Brender and Blasius would find no fellowship in the Deutscher Club now. He knew too much, however, of the retentive power of Deutschtum to believe that the schism in the club would be important.
But for every patriot who came to the aid of the sorely beset Guardian with financial support there were ten who were swayed adversely by resentment or fear. Meantime expenses went merrily on, increasing as they went. The Guardian’s surplus was already enlisted in the fight. Jeremy’s small reserve was compromised. Even Andrew Galpin, against his chief’s protest, had scraped up two thousand dollars which he insisted on putting in, as he blithely observed, “just for the hell of it.” That, Jeremy prophesied discouragingly, was about all that he might expect to get out of it!
With true Teutonic effrontery, the propagandists of Deutschtum continued their attempts to use the paper whose ruin they were encompassing, until the inutility of this procedure was at length borne in upon them by the adverse experience of Henry Vogt, florist and heavy advertiser, who personally approached Jeremy with a long and thoughtful screed in the best Teutonic-pacifist style of reasoning. This, Mr. Vogt argued, with the assurance of an old-time patron, would well beseem the editorial columns of The Guardian. The editor thought otherwise. As a result of that difference of opinion the remnants of the Vogt advertising disappeared from The Guardian’s pages just one degree less promptly than Mr. Vogt himself disappeared from its precincts. In a rather testily conceived editorial entitled “Local Dummkopfheit” Jeremy set forth the principles of his paper regarding propaganda. In response to this he received three threats of extinction, eleven of ruin, and two of unprintable language, which served to restore the level of his overtried temper.
While he was perusing this mail, his general manager came rambling in, with a queer light in his eye.
“Want to sell, Boss?”
“Sell what?”
“Sell out. Sell the paper.”
“Tell me the rest of the joke, Andy, and get out. I’m busy.”