Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/168

 I am at present in a stenographer's office dictating an account of this conversation for a publication which has a circulation of five hundred thousand"

"I don't care if it has a circulation of five hundred million."

"Then you are willing for this conversation to be reported as expressing the attitude of the 'Post'?"

"Say, Bill, we have been attacked so often by fellows like you, and we have got so prosperous on it, that we don't care anything about it."

"Very well, then; good morning."

The above conversation was recorded in the following way. The stenographer sat by my side at the telephone, and took down every word that I said. Immediately afterwards this was read off to me, and I filled in Mr. Bonfils' answers. As it happens that I have a good memory for words, I can state that the above is for practical purposes a stenographic record of the conversation. And later on I went out and bought an early edition of the "Post," and found the man had "carried over" the Governor's attack, a reprint from the day before! And then, walking down the street, I came to the building of the "Post," and looked up and saw—oh, masterpiece of humor!—an inscription graven all the way across the stone front of the building:

JUSTICE, WHEN EXPELLED FROM OTHER HABITATIONS, MAKE THIS THY DWELLING-PLACE.