“Oh, a little,” she answered. “He’s absolutely sincere; and he means business. He won’t stop at the bottom of the ladder now he’s once got his foot upon it.” “And you must not despair,” she continued; “because in the end it will seem to you that you have failed. It is the fallen that win the victories.”!

He laughed. “It isn’t always a pose,” he explained. “It’s some men’s way of saying: Thy will be done.” “Thank you,” she said, “for being so kind—and wise. I shall always love and honour her.”

The discussion was brief. “Then I’ll send your agent the contract to-morrow,” Joan overheard him say a minute later. “You can’t do it,” she concluded, “unless you are prepared to keep half the world’s literature away from the children, scrap half your music, edit your museums and your picture galleries; bowdlerize your Old Testament and rewrite your histories. And then you’ll have to be careful for twenty-four hours a day that they never see a dog-fight.” “The old pulpit became an evil, the moment it obtained unlimited power,” answered Mrs. Denton. “It originated persecution and inflamed men’s passions against one another. It, too, preached war for its own ends, taught superstition, and punished thought as a crime. The Press of to-day is stepping into the shoes of the medieval priest. It aims at establishing the worst kind of tyranny: the tyranny over men’s minds. They pretend to fight among themselves, but it’s rapidly becoming a close corporation. The Institute of Journalists will soon be followed by the union of Newspaper Proprietors and the few independent journals will be squeezed out. Already we have German shareholders on English papers; and English capital is interested in the St. Petersburg Press. It will one day have its International Pope and its school of cosmopolitan cardinals.”