“No wonder the advertisers have been falling over themselves to get back into the paper!” murmured the editor.
After further informal pledges the chairman called for reports from the “Missionary Workers.” Up rose Aider-man Crobin—Crooked Crobin, as The Guardian had dubbed him for years.
“T’ree of my constitchoonts assured me this mahmin’—voluntarily, ye ondherstand; quite voluntarily—that they are cancelin’ their contract wid th’ noo paper.”
A tall, pale young woman rose in the center of the house, and as she moistened her nervous lips a murmur and a rustle swept over the audience; for this was Mrs. Dennis Robbins, Governor Embree’s sister.
“I bring five pledges of advertisers to stand by The Guardian—and America,” she said in a low voice; and a quick ripple of sympathetic applause answered her.
Before it had died away, old Madam Taylor rustled silkily to her feet.
“I’m the tax-dodger,” she cackled. “See The Guardian if you don’t believe it. But I never dodged a good fight. Two stores that I trade with cut down their advertising in The Guardian. So I cut down my trade with them. I cut it down to nothing. Now I understand they feel differently about the paper,” she concluded malevolently.
Up popped pursy little Mrs. Stockmuller. “Me, I quit Ahrens anyway,” she announced, and sat down flushed with the resultant applause of the multitude and suddenly conscious of latent and hitherto unsuspected capabilities as a public speaker.
Then little Anne Serviss pledged the support of three hundred University girls, and following her, the Reverend Mr. Merserole reared himself impressively into sight and hearing.
“Inter arma, rixæ minores silent,” he proclaimed oracularly, “if my friend Judge Dana, whom I observe upon the stage, will permit me to alter a legal proverb to fit the occasion. ‘In time of war, lesser quarrels are stilled.’ Many of us have had our—er—trials with The Guardian. But all that is forgotten in the larger cause. I beg to report, Mr. Chairman, that eighteen members of my church—leading members, I may add—have signed an agreement to advertise in no local morning paper during the war.”