Parker made no effort to rise, but lay glaring at the ceiling, breathing
hard. He remained in that position for a long time, until finally the
glaze wore away from his eyes and a more rational expression settled over
his features. Mr. Fisbee addressed him timidly: "You don't think we could
reduce the size of the sheet?"
"It would kill him," answered his prostrate companion. "We've got to fill
her solid some way, though I give up; I don't know how. How that man has
worked! It was genius. He just floated around the county and soaked in
items, and he wrote editorials that people read. One thing's certain: we
can't do it. We're ruining his paper for him, and when he gets able to
read, it'll hurt him bad. Mighty few knew how much pride he had in it. Has
it struck you that now would be a precious good time for it to occur to
Rod McCune to come out of his hole? Suppose we go by the board, what's to
stop him? What's to stop him, anyway? Who knows where the boss put those
copies and affidavits, and if we did know, would we know the best way to
use 'em? If we did, what's to keep the 'Herald' alive until McCune lifts
his head? And if we don't stop him, the 'Carlow County Herald' is
finished. Something's got to be done!'"
No one realized this more poignantly than Mr. Fisbee, but no one was less
capable of doing something of his own initiation. And although the Tuesday
issue was forthcoming, embarrassingly pale in spots--most spots--Mr.
Martin remarked rather publicly that the items were not what you might
call stirring, and that the unpatented pages put him in mind of Jones's
field in winter with a dozen chunks of coal dropped in the snow. And his
observations on the later issues of the week (issues which were put forth
with a suggestion of spasm, and possibly to the permanent injury of Mr.
Parker's health, he looked so thin) were too cruelly unkind to be repeated
here. Indeed, Mr. Fisbee, Parker, the luckless Mr. Schofield, and the
young Tipworthy may be not untruthfully likened to a band of devoted
mariners lost in the cold and glaring regions of a journalistic Greenland:
limitless plains of empty white paper extending about them as far as the
eye could reach, while life depended upon their making these terrible
voids productive; and they shrank appalled from the task, knowing no means
to fertilize the barrens; having no talent to bring the still snows into
harvests, and already feeling-in the chill of Mr. Martin's remarks--a
touch of the frost that might wither them.