Page:The Better Sort (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1903).djvu/335

THE PAPERS everything, at everything, over everything, under everything, that has taken place for the last twenty years. He's always present, and, though he never makes a speech, he never fails to get alluded to in the speeches of others. That's doing it cheaper than anyone else does it, but it's thoroughly doing it—which is what we're talking about. And so far," the young man contended, "from its being 'in the face' of anything, it's positively with the help of everything, since the Papers are everything and more. They're made for such people, though no doubt he's the person who has known best how to use them. I've gone through one of the biggest sometimes, from beginning to end—it's quite a thrilling little game—to catch him once out. It has happened to me to think I was near it when, on the last column of the last page—I count 'advertisements,' heaven help us, out!—I've found him as large as life and as true as the needle to the pole. But at last, in a way, it goes, it can't help going, of itself. He comes in, he breaks out, of himself; the letters, under the compositor's hand, form themselves, from the force of habit, into his name—any connection for it, any context, being as good as any other, and the wind, which he has originally 'raised', but which continues to blow, setting perpetually in his favour. The thing would really be now, don't you see, for him to keep himself out. That would be, on my honour, it strikes me—his getting himself out—the biggest fact in his record."

The girl's attention, as her friend developed the picture, had become more present. "He can't get himself out. There he is." She had a pause; she had been thinking. "That's just my idea."

"Your idea? Well, an idea's always a blessing. What do you want for it?"

She continued to turn it over as if weighing its value. "Something perhaps could be done with it—only it would take imagination." 323