“Besides, you imply that because news is sensational, it must be unworthy.  That isn’t fair.  Big news is always sensational.  And of course the public wants sensation.  After all, sensation of one sort or another is the proof of life.”

“Hence the noble profession of the pander,” observed Edmonds through a coil of minute and ascending smoke-rings.  “He also serves the public.”

“You’re not drawing a parallel—­”

“Oh, no!  It isn’t the same thing, quite.  But it’s the same public.  Let me tell you something to remember, youngster.  The men who go to the top in journalism, the big men of power and success and grasp, come through with a contempt for the public which they serve, compared to which the contempt of the public for the newspaper is as skim milk to corrosive sublimate.”

“Perhaps that’s what is wrong with the business, then.”

“Have you any idea,” inquired Edmonds softly, “what the philosophy of the Most Ancient Profession is?”

Banneker shook his head.

“I once heard a street-walker on the verge of D.T.’s—­she was intelligent; most of ’em are fools—­express her analytical opinion of the men who patronized her.  The men who make our news system have much the same notion of their public.  How much poison they scatter abroad we won’t know until a later diagnosis.”

“Yet you advise me to stick in the business.”

“You’ve got to.  You are marked for it.”

“And help scatter the poison!”

“God forbid!  I’ve been pointing out the disease of the business.  There’s a lot of health in it yet.  But it’s got to have new blood.  I’m too old to do more than help a little.  Son, you’ve got the stuff in you to do the trick.  Some one is going to make a newspaper here in this rotten, stink-breathing, sensation-sniffing town that’ll be based on news.  Truth!  There’s your religion for you.  Go to it.”

“And serve a public that I’ll despise as soon as I get strong enough to disregard it’s contempt for me,” smiled Banneker.

“You’ll find a public that you can’t afford to despise,” retorted the veteran.  “There is such a public.  It’s waiting.”

“Well; I’ll know in a couple of weeks,” said Banneker.  “But I think I’m about through.”

For Edmonds’s bitter wisdom had gone far toward confirming his resolution to follow up his first incursion into the magazine field if it met with the success which he confidently expected of it.

As if to hold him to his first allegiance, the ruling spirits of The Ledger now began to make things easy for him.  Fat assignments came his way again.  Events which seemed almost made to order for his pen were turned over to him by the city desk.  Even though he found little time for Sunday “specials,” his space ran from fifteen to twenty-five dollars a day, and the “Eban” skits on the editorial page, now paid at double rates because of their popularity,