Sensationalism of other kinds was spurred to keep pace with the sex appeal.  The news columns became constantly more lurid.  They shrieked, yelled, blared, shrilled, and boomed the scandals and horrors of the moment in multivocal, multigraphic clamor, tainting the peaceful air breathed by everyday people going about their everyday business, with incredible blatancies which would be forgotten on the morrow in the excitement of fresh percussions, though the cumulative effect upon the public mind and appetite might be ineradicable.  “Murderer Dabbles Name in Bloody Print.”  “Wronged Wife Mars Rival’s Beauty.”  “Society Woman Gives Hundred-Dollar-Plate Dinner.”  “Scientist Claims Life Flickers in Mummy.”  “Cocktails, Wine, Drug, Ruin for Lovely Girl of Sixteen.”  “Financier Resigns After Sprightly Scene at Long Beach.”  Severance developed a literary genius for excitant and provocative word-combinations in the headings; “Love-Slave,” “Girl-Slasher,” “Passion-Victim,” “Death-Hand,” “Vengeance-Oath,” “Lust-Fiend.”  The articles chosen for special display were such as lent themselves, first, to his formula for illustration, and next to captions which thrilled with the sensations of crime, mystery, envy of the rich and conspicuous, or lechery, half concealed or unconcealed.  For facts as such he cared nothing.  His conception of news was as a peg upon which to hang a sensation.  “Love and luxury for the women:  money and power for the men,” was his broad working scheme for the special interest of the paper, with, of course, crime and the allure of the flesh for general interest.  A jungle man, perusing one day’s issue (supposing him to have been competent to assimilate it), would have judged the civilization pictured therein too grisly for his unaccustomed nerves and fled in horror back to the direct, natural, and uncomplicated raids and homicides of the decent wilds.

The Great Gaines, descending for once from the habitual classicism of his phraseology, described The Patriot of Severance’s production in two terse and sufficient words.

“It itches.”

That itch irked Banneker almost unendurably at times.  He longed to be relieved of it; to scratch the irritant Severance clean off the skin of The Patriot.  But Severance was too evidently valuable.  Banneker did go so far as to protest.

“Aren’t you rather overdoing this thing, Severance?”

“Which thing?  We’re overdoing everything; hence the growth of the paper.”

Banneker fell back upon banality.  “Well, we’ve got to draw the line somewhere.”

Severance bestowed upon the other his well-bred and delicate smile.  “Exactly my principle.  I’m for drawing the line every issue and on every page, if there’s room for it. ‘Nulla dies sine linea.’  The line of appeal to the sensations, whether it’s a pretty face or a caption that jumps out and grabs you by the eye.  I want to make ’em gloat.”

“I see.  You were in earnest more or less when in our first talk, you defined your profession.”