There was his splash, and then he would start
to keep splashing. By every art and device the pool would be flogged
till the muddy water went flying broadcast, staining this, that, and
the other fair name to the nasty delight of Mr. Bitt's readers.
Scandal was Mr. Bitt's chief quest. Army scandal, navy scandal,
political scandal, social scandal--these were the courses that Mr.
Bitt continuously strove to serve up to his readers. Failing them--if
disappointingly in evidence on every side was the integrity and the
honour for which Mr. Bitt raved and bawled when in the thick of
splashing a muddy pool,--then, argued Mr. Bitt, catch hold of
something trivial and splash it, flog it, placard it, into a
sensational and semi-mysterious bait that would set the halfpennies
rising like trout in an evening stream.
Bringing these principles-indeed they won him his appointment--to the
editorship of the _Daily_, Mr. Bitt was set moody and irritable by the
fact that he had no opportunity to exercise them over the first issue
of the paper.
But while preparing for press upon the second night the chance came.
There was no scandal, no effective news; but there was matter for a
sensational, semi-mysterious "leading story" in a tiny little scrap of
news dictated by Mr. David Brunger, laboriously copied out a dozen
times by Mr.
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