"You may direct Marks to do as I have said. I believe it is what
Christ would do, and as I told you, Clark, that is what I have
promised to try to do for a year, regardless of what the results may
be to me. I cannot believe that by any kind of reasoning we could
reach a conclusion justifying our Lord in the advertisement, in this
age, of whiskey and tobacco in a newspaper. There are some other
advertisements of a doubtful character I shall study into.
Meanwhile, I feel a conviction in regard to these that cannot be
silenced."

Clark went back to his desk feeling as if he had been in the
presence of a very peculiar person. He could not grasp the meaning
of it all. He felt enraged and alarmed. He was sure any such policy
would ruin the paper as soon as it became generally known that the
editor was trying to do everything by such an absurd moral standard.
What would become of business if this standard was adopted? It would
upset every custom and introduce endless confusion. It was simply
foolishness. It was downright idiocy. So Clark said to himself, and
when Marks was informed of the action he seconded the managing
editor with some very forcible ejaculations. What was the matter
with the chief? Was he insane? Was he going to bankrupt the whole
business?

But Edward Norman had not yet faced his most serious problem. When
he came down to the office Friday morning he was confronted with the
usual program for the Sunday morning edition. The NEWS was one one
of the few evening papers in Raymond to issue a Sunday edition, and
it had always been remarkably successful financially. There was an
average of one page of literary and religious items to thirty or
forty pages of sport, theatre, gossip, fashion, society and