“Did you draw these?” asked Banneker in surprise, for the draughtsmanship was expert.

“No.  Hired a kid artist to do ’em.  I furnished the idea.”

“Oh, you furnished the idea, did you?” queried Edmonds.  “And where did you get it?”

With an ineffably satisfied air, Mr. Sheffer tapped his bullet head.

“You must be older than you look, then.  Those figures of the kids are redrawn from a last-century German humorous classic, ‘Max und Moritz.’  I used to be crazy over it when I was a youngster.  My grandfather brought it to me from Europe, and made a translation for us youngsters.”

“Sure!  Those pictures’d make a reformer laugh.  I picked up the book in German on an Ann Street sidewalk stand, caught the Big Idea right then and there; to Americanize the stuff and—­”

“For ‘Americanize,’ read ‘steal,’” commented Edmonds.

“There ain’t no thin’ crooked in this,” protested the other with sincerity.  “The stuff ain’t copyrighted here.  I looked that up particularly.”

“Quite true, I believe,” confirmed Severance.  “It’s an open field.”

“I got ten series mapped out to start.  Call ’em ’The Trouble-hunter Twins, Ruff and Reddy.’  If they catch on, the artist and me can keep ’em goin’ forever.  And they’ll catch.”

“I believe they will,” said Severance.

“Smeared across the top of a page it’ll make a business man laugh as hard as a kid.  I know business men.  I was one, myself.  Sold bar fixtures on the road for four years.  And my best selling method was the laughs I got out of ’em.  Used to take a bit of chalk and do sketches on the table-tops.  So I know what makes ’em laugh.  Belly-laughs.  You make a business man laugh that way, and you get his business.  It ain’t circulation alone; it’s advertising that the stuff will bring in.  Eh?”

“What do you think, Mr. Banneker?” asked Severance.

“It’s worth trying,” decided Banneker after thought.  “You don’t think so, do you, Pop?”

“Oh, go ahead!” returned Edmonds, spewing forth a mouthful of smoke as if to expel a bad taste.  “What’s larceny among friends?”

“But we’re not taking anything of value, since there’s no copyright and any one can grab it,” pointed out the smooth Severance.

Thus there entered into the high-tension atmosphere of the sensationalized Patriot the relaxing quality of humor.  Under the ingenuous and acquisitive Sheffer, whose twins achieved immediate popularity, it developed along other lines.  Sheffer—­who knew what makes business men laugh—­pinned his simple faith to three main subjects, convulsive of the diaphragmatic muscles, building up each series upon the inherent humor to be extracted from physical violence as represented in the perpetrations and punishments of Ruff and Reddy, marital infidelity as mirrored in the stratagems and errancies of an amorous ape with an aged and jealous spouse, and the sure-fire familiarity of aged minstrel jokes (mother-in-law, country constable, young married cookery, and the like) refurbished in pictorial serials through the agency of two uproarious and imbecilic vulgarians, Bonehead and Buttinsky.