manager--with a kind of paternal severity that was deeply
distressing to our spirit. They are all, in off hours, men of
delightfully easy disposition. They are men with whom it would be a
pleasure and a privilege to be cast away on a desert island or in a
crowded subway train. It is only just to say that they are men whom
we admire greatly. When we meet them in the elevator, or see them at
Frank's having lunch, how full of jolly intercourse they are. But in
the conduct of their passionate and perilous business, that is, of
getting the paper out on time, a holy anguish shines upon their
brows. The stern daughter of the voice of God has whispered to them,
and they pass on the whisper to us through a mega-phone.

That means to say that within the hour we have got to show up
something in the neighbourhood of 1100 words to these magistrates
and overseers. With these keys--typewriter keys, of course--we have
got to unlock our heart. Milton, thou shouldst be living at this
hour. Speaking of Milton, the damp that fell round his path (in
Wordsworth's sonnet) was nothing to the damp that fell round our
alert vestiges as we hastened to the Salamis station in that drench
this morning. (We ask you to observe our self-restraint. We might
have said "drenching downpour of silver Long Island rain," or
something of that sort, and thus got several words nearer our
necessary total of 1100. But we scorn, even when writing against
time, to take petty advantages. Let us be brief, crisp, packed with
thought. Let it stand as drench, while you admire our proud
conscience.)

Eleven hundred words--what a lot could be said in 1100 words! We
stood at the front door of the baggage car (there is an odd irony in
this: the leading editorial writer, one of the most implacable of