It was just a callow escapade
“Don’t say ‘you,’ please,” besought Marrineal. “I’ve been keeping my hands off. Watching.”
“And now you’re going to take hold?” queried Edmonds. “Personally?”
“As soon as I can find my formula–and the men to help me work it out,” he added, after a pause so nicely emphasized that both his hearers had a simultaneous inkling of the reason for his being at their table.
“I’ve seen newspapers run on formula before,” muttered Edmonds.
“Onto the rocks?”
“Invariably.”
“That’s because the formulas were amateur formulas, isn’t it?”
The veteran of a quarter-century turned a mildly quizzical smile upon the adventurer into risky waters. “Well?” he jerked out.
Marrineal’s face was quite serious as he took up the obvious implication. “Where is the dividing line between professional and amateur in the newspaper business? You gentlemen will bear with me if I go into personal details a little. I suppose I’ve always had the newspaper idea. When I was a youngster of twenty, I tried myself out. Got a job as a reporter in St. Louis. It was just a callow escapade. And of course it couldn’t last. I was an undisciplined sort of cub. They fired me; quite right, too. But I did learn a little. And at least it educated me in one thing; how to read newspapers.” He laughed lightly. “Perhaps that is as nearly thorough an education as I’ve ever had in anything.”
“It’s rather an art, newspaper reading,” observed Banneker.
“You’ve tried it, I gather. So have I, rather exhaustively in the last year. I’ve been reading every paper in New York every day and all through.”
“That’s a job for an able-minded man,” commented Edmonds, looking at him with a new respect.
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