These questions are wholly perfunctory.  The telegraph editor has dedicated five minutes to the history and diary of the triple alliance.

When Corkey is happy this inquisition flatters him.  When he is black in the face there is an inclination to deal harshly with these wits.  A thousand clever things flash into his black eyes but escape his tongue.

He struggles to say something that will put the laugh on the telegraph editor, and begins choking.  The head vibrates, the little tongue plays about the black tobacco, the mouth grows square.

“Run for your lives, gentlemen,” cries the assistant telegraph editor, making believe to hold down his shears.  There is an explosion.  It is accompanied with many distinguishable noises—­the hissing of steam, the routing of hogs from their wallow, the screech of tug whistles and the yell of Indians.

The door stands open to the great composing-room, where eighty typesetters—­eighty cynics—­eighty nervous, high-strung, well-paid workmen—­stand at their intellectual toil.  They are all in a hurry, but each rasps his iron type-stick across a thin partition of his type case.  It is a small horse-fiddle.  The combined effect is impressive, chaotic.

The night foreman rages internally.  He stalks about with baleful eye.  “Buck in, you fellows,” he says.  “The paper is behind.”

“I wish it would kill him,” the night foreman says of Corkey.

There is silence in the telegraph-room.  The tinkle of the horse-cars comes up audibly from the street.  The night editor knows what has happened, to the slightest detail.  He mentally sees the night foreman standing in the shadows of the parlor (wash-place) laughing to kill.  The night editor grows still more unctuous.

“From earthquakes, hailstorms and early frosts,” he prays, “good Lord, deliver us.”

“Good Lord, deliver us!” comes the solemn antiphone of the telegraph editor, the assistant telegraph editor, Corkey and the copy boy.

The chinchilla coat is off.  This is manifestly a hard way to earn a living for a candidate for Congress, a dark horse for the legislature and a marine editor who has run his legs off all day.

“He’s been moving,” the boy whispers to the night editor.

The night editor scans the dark face.  It is serious enough.  It is the night editor’s method to rule his people by the moderation of his speech.  In this way they do all the work and thank him for keeping his nose out of affairs.

“We hear, commodore, that you have moved your household gods.”

“Yes,” grunts Corkey.  To the jam-jorum Corkey must be civil, as he will tell you.

“Where to?”

“Top flat, across the alley from the Grand Pacific.”

“That’s a five-story building, isn’t it?”

“That’s what it is.”

Corkey is busy fixing his telegrams for the printer.  He is trying to learn what the current date is, and is unwilling to ask.