Yes, the Majestic
had its good qualities! He had ordered that all the London morning
daily papers should be laid at his door as early as possible--and
there the pile was, somewhat damp, and as fresh as fruit, with a
slight odour of ink. He took it in.
His heart was beating as he climbed back into bed with it and arranged
pillows so that he could sit up, and unfolded the first paper. Nellie
had not stirred.
Once again he was disappointed in the prominence given by the powerful
London press to his London enterprise. In the first newspaper, a
very important one, he positively could not find any criticism of the
Regent's first night. There was nearly a page of the offensive Isabel
Joy, who was now appealing, through the newspapers, to the President
of the United States. Isabel had been christened the World-Circler,
and the special correspondents of the entire earth were gathered about
her carpeted cell. Hope still remained that she would reach London
within the hundred days. An unknown adherent of the cause for which
she suffered had promised to give ten thousand pounds to that cause
if she did so. Further, she was receiving over sixty proposals of
marriage a day. And so on and so on! Most of this he gathered in an
instant from the headlines alone. Nauseating! Another annoying item in
the paper was a column and a half given to the foundation-stone-laying
of the First New Thought Church, in Dean Street, Soho--about a couple
of hundred yards from its original site.
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