Page:Christopher Morley--Tales from a rolltop desk.djvu/196

way they can hold their jobs is by agreeing with him. If someone could only put him wise———"

"But how can you put him wise? He doesn't see anything unless it's laid out for him in a strip cartoon or a full-page ad. The kind of thing that interests him is the talk he hears in a Pullman smoker or club car."

"That's a fact. You know he always says he likes to go travelling, because he picks up ideas from people on the train. 'Of course I place you! Mr. Mowbray Monk of Seattle. And is your Rotary Club still rotating?' That kind of talk."

"I think you're right," said Sanford. "He doesn't see us because we have too much protective colouring. We are only the patient drudges. We don't talk that Pullman palaver about Big Business. We've got to learn to talk his language. What is that phrase of Bacon's—we've got to bring ourselves home to his business and bosom———"

"Let's get back to the office," said the disillusioned literary editor. "That's the way to bring home the bacon."

A few days later Sanford was at his desk, clipping and pasting press agents' flimsies for the Saturday Theatre Page. This was a task which he hated above all others, and he was meditating