"With my flunkies and my handmaids. No, Marty, I'm going into another business."
"And what do you know about editing a magazine?"
"What do most of the editors know?" queried Joe. "You don't have to know anything. Everybody's editing magazines nowadays."
"A magazine!" Marty was disgusted. "You're falling pretty low, Joe. Why don't you stick to an honest business? Gosh! you'd make a queer fist editing a magazine!"
So Joe in a shaking voice unfolded his philosophy, and as he did so Marty became dazed and aghast, gazing at his boss as if Joe had turned into some unthinkable zoological oddity. Into Marty's prim-set life, with its definite boundaries and unmysterious exactness, was poured a vapor of lunacy. Finally Joe wound up with:
"So you see I've got to do what little I can to help straighten things. You see, Marty? Now, what do you think of it? Give me your honest opinion."
"Now see here, Joe," Marty burst out, "you and I grew up in the business together, and we know each other well enough to speak out, even if you are my boss, don't we?"
"Well, Marty, if it weren't for the blamed idiots--like Columbus and Tom Watts and the prophets and Abe Lincoln--this world would be in a pretty mess."
But Marty refused to be convinced, even averring that the world _is_ in a pretty mess, and that probably the aforementioned "idiots" had caused it to be so. Then finally he spoke caressingly:
"No," said Joe, earnestly, "it's what I've got to face, Marty, and I need your backing."
"So the game's up, and you've changed, and we men can go to the dogs. Why, we can't run that printery without you. We'd go plumb to hell!"
Joe changed his voice--it became more commanding.
"Never mind now, Marty. I want your help to figure things out."
So Marty got out his little pad and the two drew close together.
"I want to figure on a weekly newspaper--I'm figuring big on the future--just want to see what it will come to. Say an edition of twenty thousand copies, an eight-page paper, eight by twelve, no illustrations."
"Well, you'll need a good cylinder press for a starter."
"Make-up man--pressman--feeder--that's on the press. Will you set up the paper yourself?"
"No, I won't deal with any news company. I want to go direct to the people. Say I get a hundred newsmen to distribute in their neighborhood?"