As soon as the editor saw this, he wrote a note to the chief contributor, and asked her to call at the office the next day. So soon as she entered, he charged her with her guilt; and before the miserable creature could reply, he drew his cimeter and cut off her head. He then sent shorter notes to the lesser contributors; and as each one entered the office, he explained briefly that he knew all, and, with his own hand, beheaded him. He then ordered the porters and janitors to throw the heads and bodies into the Jumna, and, with his brother's assistance, he called in a new circle of new contributors, and made up the next number of the "Friend of the City" from their poems and articles. The director of advertisements and of press criticisms manufactured reputations for them all, and the number was pronounced the most brilliant number of the "Friend of the City" which had ever been published.
Then the editor sent advance copies to each of these contributors, and asked them to call at the office the next morning. As each one called, the editor drew his cimeter and cut off the contributor's head. He then called the porters and janitors, and bade them throw the carcasses and heads into the Jumna, and proceeded to make up the next number. And thus he did for three years.
As the third year passed, however, the assistant editors began to observe that there was a certain difficulty in collecting poems and articles. Nay, it was even whispered that in the publication office they feared that the magazine was losing popularity. The rumors from the publication office were not often permitted to exhale in the editorial rooms. But still there was a suspicion that from the homes of the authors, who had been cut short so summarily, there was going out a sort of public opinion unfavorable to the renewal of subscriptions. As for authors, for some time they presented themselves freely. Each poet and each story-writer was quite sure that her communication was so much better than anything which had ever been written before that they all moved up to the fatal edge of publication with serenity, each quite sure that for herself the rule would be reversed, and each quite sure that the others deserved decapitation. But, as has been said, after three years the steady supply of articles was a little checked, perhaps because a rumor was put in circulation by the conductors of the "Pearl of Wit" that the editor of the "Friend of the City" was crazy, and could not if he would, and would not if he could, tell a bad article from a good one.