It was Buck who suggested to his
pupil, in October, a particularly novel experience for his soul's
unfolding, which Queed, though failing to adopt it, sometimes dandled
before his mind's eye with a kind of horrified fascination, viz: the
taking of Miss Miller to the picture shows.
But the bulk of his time this autumn was still going to his work on the
_Post_. With ever fresh wonderment, he faced the fact that this work,
first taken up solely to finance the Scriptorium, and next enlarged to
satisfy a most irrational instinct, was growing slowly but surely upon
his personal interest. Certainly the application of a new science to a
new set of practical conditions was stimulating to his intellect; the
panorama of problems whipped out daily by the telegraph had a warmth and
immediateness wanting to the abstractions of closet philosophy. Queed's
articles lacked the Colonel's expert fluency, his loose but telling
vividness, his faculty for broad satire which occasionally set the whole
city laughing. On the other hand, they displayed an exact knowledge of
fact, a breadth of study and outlook, and a habit of plumbing bottom on
any and all subjects which critical minds found wanting in the Colonel's
delightful discourses.
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