"If you don't take me away, I'll run in circles!" whispered Bob fiercely to his friend.
They escaped into the open air.
"Phew!" said Bob, straightening his long form. "Is that what you call the good society here?"
"Good society is there," amended Baker. "That's the joke. There are lots of nice people in this little old town, people who lisp our language fluently. They are all mixed in with the Fuzzies."
They decided to walk home. Bob marvelled at the impressive and substantial buildings, at the atrocious streets. He spoke of the beautiful method of illuminating one of the thoroughfares—by globes of light gracefully supported in clusters on branched arms either side the roadway.
"They were originally bronze—and they went and painted them a mail-box green," commented Baker drily.
At the hotel the night clerk, a young man, quietly dressed and with an engaging air, greeted them with just the right amount of cordiality as he handed them their keys. Bob paused to look about him.
"This is a good hotel," he remarked.
"It's one of the best-managed, the best-conducted, and the best-appointed hotels in the United States," said Baker with conviction.
The next morning Bob bought all the papers and glanced through them with considerable wonder and amusement. They were decidedly metropolitan in size, and carried a tremendous amount of advertising. Early in his perusal he caught the personal bias of the news. Without distortion to the point of literal inaccuracy, nevertheless by skilful use of headlines and by manipulation of the point of view, all items were made to subserve a purpose. In local affairs the most vulgar nicknaming, the most savage irony, vituperation, scorn and contempt were poured out full measure on certain individuals unpopular with the papers. Such epithets as "lickspittle," "toad," "carcass blown with the putrefying gas of its own importance," were read in the body of narration.