Part 26 (2/2)

She did not stop to a.n.a.lyse her feeling of relief at this release, and went on to protest: ”But I want your life to be my life. I want there to be only one life--our life.”

”And there shall be--each contributing his share, at least I'll try to contribute mine. But you have your own individuality, dear; and a very strong one it is. And I don't want you to change.”

At the time he was deep in his plans for ill.u.s.trating the _News-Record_.

Early in that fall's campaign they had secured the best cartoonist in America. Cartoons are rarely the work of one man but are got up by consultations. Howard spent never less than an hour each day with the cartoonist, Wickham, wrestling with the problem of the next day's picture. For he insisted upon having a striking cartoon each day, and gave it the most conspicuous place in the paper--the top-centre of the first page.

”If a cartoon is worth printing at all,” he said, ”it is worth printing large and conspicuous. And to be worth printing it must be like an ideal editorial--one point sharply and swiftly made and so clear that the most careless glance-of-the-eye is enough.”

Wickham had made a series of cartoons on the campaign, humorous and satirical, which had the distinction of being reproduced on lantern slides for use in all parts of the town. It was an admirable beginning of the new policy of ill.u.s.tration. Howard had been making a careful study of all the ill.u.s.trators in the country, not overlooking those toiling in obscurity on the big western dailies. He had selected a staff of twenty; as soon as Coulter and Stokely a.s.sented, he engaged them by telegraph. Five were developed artists, the rest beginners with talent.

He gave all of his attention for two weeks to organising this staff.

He infected it with his enthusiasm. He impressed upon it his ideas of newspaper ill.u.s.tration--the dash and energy of the French ill.u.s.trators adapted to American public taste. He insisted upon the artists studying the French ill.u.s.trated papers and applying what they learned. It was not until the first Sunday in December that he felt ready to submit the results of these labours to the public.

Again he scored over the ”contemporaries” of the _News-Record_.

They printed many more ill.u.s.trations than it did. It had only one ill.u.s.tration on a page, but there was one on every page and a good one.

All the subjects were well chosen--either action or character--and as many good looking women as possible.

”Never publish a commonplace face,” he said. ”There is no such thing in life as an uninteresting face. Always find the element of interest and bring it out.”

The result of this policy, interpreted by a carefully trained and enthusiastic staff, was what the out-of-town press was soon praising as ”a revelation in newspaper-ill.u.s.tration.” Howard himself was surprised.

He had mentally insured against a long period of disappointment.

”This shows,” he remarked to King and Vroom, ”how much more competent men are than we usually think--if they get a chance, if they are pointed in the right direction and are left free.”

”He certainly knows his business.” Vroom was looking after Howard admiringly. ”I never saw anybody who so well understood when to lead and when to let alone. What results he does get!”

”A pity to waste such talents on this thankless business,” said King.

”If he'd gone into real business, he would have a salary of a hundred thousand a year, would be rich and secure for life. Why, a business man could and would make a whole career on the ideas he has in a single week. As it is----”

King shrugged his shoulders and Vroom finished the sentence for him: ”Coulter and Stokely could kick him out to-morrow and the _News-Record_ would go straight on living upon his ideas for ten years at least.”

Howard needed no one to make this truth clear to him to the full. Often, as he thought of his expanding tastes, his expanding expenditures and his expanding plans both for his private life and for his career, he felt an awful sinking at the heart and a sense of fundamental weakness.

”I am building upon sand,” he said to himself. ”In business, in the law, in almost any other career to-day's work would be to-morrow's capital.

As it is, I am ever more and more a slave. To be free I ought to be poor or rich. And I cannot endure the thought of poverty again. I must be rich.”

The idea allured him to a degree that made him ashamed of himself.

Sometimes, when he was talking to Marian or writing editorials, all in the strain of high principle and contempt for sordidness, he would flush at the thought that he was in reality a good deal of a hypocrite. ”I'm expressing the ideals I ought to have, the ideals I used to have, not the ideals I have.”

But the clearer this discrepancy became to him and the wider the gap between what he ought to think and what he really did think, the more strenuously he protested to himself against himself, and the more fiercely he denounced in public the very poison he was himself taking.

”I am living in a tainted atmosphere,” he said to Marian. ”We all are. I fight against the taint but how can I hope to avoid the consequences if I persist in breathing it, in absorbing it at every pore of my body?”

”I don't understand you.” Marian was used to his moods of self-criticism and did not attach much importance to them.

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