I've had to use it a good deal myself

The look above the lowered glasses became slightly quizzical. "You're exact, at least. Patient, too. Good qualities for a newspaper man. That's what you are?" "What I'm going to be," amended Banneker. "There is no opening here at present." "That's formula, isn't it?" asked the young man, smiling. The other stared. "It is. But how do you know?" "It's the tone, I suppose. I've had to use it a good deal myself, in railroading." "Observant, as well as exact and patient. Come in. I'm sorry I misplaced your card. The name is--?" "Banneker, E. Banneker." Following the editor, he passed through a large, low-ceilinged room, filled with desk-tables, each bearing a heavy crystal ink-well full of a fluid of particularly virulent purple. A short figure, impassive as a Mongol, sat at a corner desk, gazing out over City Hall Park with a rapt gaze. Across from him a curiously trim and graceful man, with a strong touch of the Hibernian in his elongated jaw and humorous gray eyes, clipped the early evening editions with an effect of highly judicious selection. Only one person sat in all the long files of the work-tables, littered with copy-paper and disarranged newspapers; a dark young giant with the discouraged and hurt look of a boy kept in after school. All this Banneker took in while the managing editor was disposing, usually with a single penciled word or number, of a sheaf of telegraphic "queries" left upon his desk. Having finished, he swiveled in his chair, to face Banneker, and, as he spoke, kept bouncing the thin point of a letter-opener from the knuckles of his left hand. His hands were fat and nervous. "So you want to do newspaper work?" "Yes." "Why?" "I think I can make a go of it." "Any experience?" "None to speak of. I've written a few things. I thought you might remember my name." "Your name? Banneker? No. Why should I?" "You published some of my things in the Sunday edition, lately. From Manzanita, California."