_In which an Assistant Editor, experiencing the Common Desire to
thrash a Proof-Reader, makes a Humiliating Discovery; and of how
Trainer Klinker gets a Pupil the Same Evening._
The industrial problems of the Bavarians seemed an inoffensive thesis
enough, but who can evade Destiny?
Queed never read his own articles when they appeared in print in the
_Post_. In this peculiarity he may be said to have resembled all the
rest of the world, with the exception of the Secretary of the Tax Reform
League, and the Assistant Secretary of the State Department of
Charities. But not by any such device, either, can a man elude his Fate.
On the day following his conversation with Mrs. Paynter's agent, Fortune
gave Queed to hear a portion of his article on the Bavarians read aloud,
and read with derisive laughter.
The incident occurred on a street-car, which he had taken because of the
heavy snow-fall: another illustration of the tiny instruments with which
Providence works out its momentous designs. Had he not taken the car--he
was on the point of not taking it, when one whizzed invitingly up--he
would never have heard of the insult that the Post's linotype had put
upon him, and the course of his life might have been different. As it
was, two men on the next seat in front were reading the Post and making
merry.
"... '_A lengthy procession of fleas harassed the diet._' Now what in
the name of Bob ..."
Gradually the sentence worked its way into the closed fastness of the
young man's mind. It had a horrible familiarity, like a ghastly parody
on something known and dear. With a quick movement he leaned forward,
peering over the shoulder of the man who held the paper.
The man looked around, surprised and annoyed by the strange face
breaking in so close to his own, but Queed paid no attention to him. Yes
... it was his article they were mocking at--HIS article. He remembered
the passage perfectly. He had written: "A lengthy procession of pleas
harassed the Diet." His trained eye swept rapidly down the half column
of print. There it was! "A procession of fleas." In _his_ article!
Fleas, unclean, odious vermin, in His Article!
Relatively, Queed cared nothing about his work on the _Post_, but for
all the children of his brain, even the smallest and feeblest, he had a
peculiar tenderness. He was more jealous of them than a knight of his
honor, or a beauty of her complexion. No insult to his character could
have enraged him like a slight put upon the least of these his articles.
He sat back in his seat, feeling white, and something clicked inside his
head. He remembered having heard that click once before. It was the
night he determined to evolve the final theory of social progress, which
would wipe out all other theories as the steam locomotive had wiped out
the prairie schooner.
He knew well enough what that click meant now. He had got a new purpose,
and that was to exact personal reparation from the criminal who had made
Him and His Work the butt of street-car loafers. Never, it seemed to
him, could he feel clean again until he had wiped off those fleas with
gore.
To his grim inquiry Colonel Cowles replied that the head proof-reader,
Mr. Pat, was responsible for typographical errors, and Mr. Pat did not
"come on" till 6.30. It was now but 5.50. Queed sat down, wrote his next
day's article and handed it to the Colonel, who read the title and
coughed.
"I shall require no article from you to-morrow or next day. On the
following day"--here the Colonel opened a drawer and consulted a
schedule--"I shall receive with pleasure your remarks on 'Fundamental
Principles of Distribution--Article Four.'"
Queed ascended to the next floor, a noisy, discordant floor, full of
metal tables on castors, and long stone-topped tables not on castors,
and Mergenthaler machines, and slanting desk-like structures holding
fonts of type. Rough board partitions rose here and there; over
everything hung the deadly scent of acids from the engravers' room.
"That's him now," said an ink-smeared lad, and nodded toward a tall,
gangling, mustachioed fellow in a black felt hat who had just come up
the stairs.
Queed marched straight for the little cubbyhole where the proof-readers
and copy-holders sweated through their long nights.
"You are Mr. Pat, head proof-reader of the _Post_?"
"That's me, sor," said Mr. Pat, and he turned with rather a sharp glance
at the other's tone.
"What excuse have you to offer for making my article ridiculous and me a
common butt?"
"An' who the divil may you be, please?"
"I am Mr. Queed, special editorial writer for this paper. Look at this."
He handed over the folded _Post_, with the typographical enormity
heavily underscored in blue. "What do you mean by falsifying my language
and putting into my mouth an absurd observation about the most loathsome
of vermin?"
Mr. Pat was at once chagrined and incensed. He happened, further, to be
in most sensitive vein as regards little oversights in his department.
His professional pride was tortured with the recollection that, only
three days before, he had permitted the _Post_ to refer to old Major
Lamar as "that immortal veterinary," and upon the _Post's_ seeking to
retrieve itself the next day, at the Major's insistent demand, he had
fallen into another error. The hateful words had come out as "immoral
veteran."
"Now look here!" said he, "there's nothing to be gained talking that
way. Ye've got me--I'll give ye that! But what do ye expect?--eighty
columns of type a night and niver a little harmless slip--?"
"You must be taught to make no slips with my articles. I'm going to
punish you for that--"
"What-a-at! Say that agin!"
"Stand out here--I am going to give you a good thrashing. I shall whip
..."
Another man would have laughed heartily and told the young man to trot
away while the trotting was good. He was nearly half a foot shorter than
Mr. Pat, and his face advertised his unmartial customs. But Mr. Pat had
the swift fierce passions of his race; and it became to him an
unendurable thing to be thus bearded by a little spectacled person in
his own den. He saw red; and out shot his good right arm.
The little Doctor proved a good sailer, but bad at making a landing. His
course was arched, smooth, and graceful, but when he stopped, he did it
so bluntly that men working two stories below looked up to ask each
other who was dead. Typesetters left their machines and hurried up,
fearing that here was a case for ambulance or undertaker. But they saw
the fallen editor pick himself up, with a face of stupefied wonder, and
immediately start back toward the angry proof-reader.