Shrewd Publishing

Huge advertisements of Mr. Hearst's Cosmopolitan for May feature an allegedly true story entitled Mercy. "One day a chilling shadow fell," says the blurb. "While Mrs. Wills, with her two small sons, was away on a visit to her parents, the Reverend Robert N. Wills disappeared--and with him the pretty dark-eyed organist!" Then the ad takes on bolder type: "A story of a once prominent minister and his life expiation for a moment's madness." "A story that never got into the newspapers because a whole city held its secret in- violate." Ray Long edits the Cosmopolitan for Mr. Hearst. He says he is printing the story for the good of humanity. It is based on religion. In newspaper, circles the remark is passed that the city which kept the secret inviolate is not New York, nor Chicago, nor Boston, nor Detroit, nor Los Angeles, nor Atlanta, nor Washington, nor Rochester, nor Syracuse, nor Milwaukee, nor San Francisco, nor Seattle, nor Fort Worth, nor Baltimore. Where there is a Hearst paper, no scandal lacks either prophet or historian.