'No, I am perfectly serious. Let me explain my principle. I would
have the paper address itself to the quarter-educated; that is to
say, the great new generation that is being turned out by the
Board schools, the young men and women who can just read, but are
incapable of sustained attention. People of this kind want
something to occupy them in trains and on 'buses and trams. As a
rule they care for no newspapers except the Sunday ones; what
they want is the lightest and frothiest of chit-chatty
information--bits of stories, bits of description, bits of
scandal, bits of jokes, bits of statistics, bits of foolery. Am I
not right? Everything must be very short, two inches at the
utmost; their attention can't sustain itself beyond two inches.
Even chat is too solid for them: they want chit-chat.'
Jasper had begun to listen seriously.
'There's something in this, Whelpdale,' he remarked.
'Ha! I have caught you?' cried the other delightedly. 'Of course
there's something in it?'
'But--' began Dora, and checked herself.
'You were going to say--' Whelpdale bent towards her with
deference.
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