"I tell you one of the first things I mean to do,
Munro," said he. "I mean to have a paper of my own.
We'll start a weekly paper here, you and I, and we'll
make them sit up all round. We'll have an organ of our
own, just like every French politician. If any one
crosses us, we'll make them wish they had never been
born. Eh, what, laddie? what d'you think? So clever,
Munro, that everybody's bound to read it, and so scathing
that it will just fetch out blisters every time. Don't
you think we could?"
"What politics?" I asked.
"Oh, curse the politics! Red pepper well rubbed in,
that's my idea of a paper. Call it the Scorpion.
Chaff the Mayor and the Council until they call a
meeting and hang themselves. I'd do the snappy
paragraphs, and you would do the fiction and poetry. I
thought about it during the night, and Hetty has written
to Murdoch's to get an estimate for the printing. We
might get our first number out this day week."
"My dear chap!" I gasped.
"I want you to start a novel this morning. You
won't get many patients at first, and you'll have lots of
time."
"But I never wrote a line in my life."
"A properly balanced man can do anything he sets his
hand to. He's got every possible quality inside him, and
all he wants is the will to develop it."
"Could you write a novel yourself?" I asked.
"Of course I could. Such a novel, Munro, that when
they'd read the first chapter the folk would just sit
groaning until the second came out.
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