Herbert Beatty is an accountant who works for William C. Dow and Company. Beatty is a very unmemorable man with a monotonous life, and he does not have any close friends or relatives. He has the same routine every day, and he goes to lunch at 12:30 at the same restaurant daily. After lunch in the summer, he goes to the park to read the newspaper and feed ducks, and then he goes back to work. Beatty's favorite parts of the newspaper are the comics, the editorial of Dr. Francis Crake, and the Enquirer's column. In the Enquirer's column, four random people are asked a question of current interest, and their response and photograph is printed in the paper. One day in the summer, Beatty is reading the editorial section in the park. A young man with a camera over his shoulder sits on the bench next to Beatty. The man reveals that he runs the Enquirer's column, and he asks Beatty what he thinks America's immigration policy should be. Beatty is dazed and flustered and does not know what to say. The reporter asks if he thinks that there is something to be said on both sides of the issue, and if it would be a good thing for the government to adopt a fairly cautious restriction policy for the next twenty-five years. Beatty agrees that this would be good, and the reporter adds that by then the government could decide where they stand with the foreign-born population in America and decide their future policy. This seems like a good way of looking at the issue to Beatty, and he agrees. The reporter takes Beatty's picture, and remarks that he is glad to have found someone with more moderate views on the matter to interview. Beatty resumes his day, thinking about how many people would read his interview in the morning. The next morning, he wakes up an hour early an buys a copy of the paper. He reads the Enquirer's section, and sees his picture next to his response to the question, which is just the ideas that the interviewer proposed to him. Beatty remembers that he had been confused at the time of the interview, and he cannot remember what his exact response had been. He is impressed with the reporter for being able to get to the gist of his thoughts. Beatty reads the other responses, and they are much more extreme, and he thinks that his is the most sensible of them all. He imagines the editorialist Dr. Francis Crake reading his response and remarking on how intelligent Beatty is. When Beatty gets to work, the owner of the company William Dow wants to see him. Beatty goes to Dow's office, and Dow says that he liked Beatty's response in the paper. He asks Beatty how he would put a policy of restriction into effect if he had the power, and what nationalities should be restricted first, like maybe Russians. Beatty agrees that maybe Russians, but he is not sure. Dow looks at him keenly, and asks how long he has been at the company. Beatty responds that he has been there twenty years, and Dow asks if he thinks the accounting department is efficiently managed. Beatty says yes, but that Dow would know better than him. Dow asks if Beatty has any suggestions for how the department could be bettered, and Beatty does not. Dow says that he is glad to have had the opportunity to chat with Beatty and dismisses him. A few years later, Beatty is reading the paper in the park after having fed the pigeons, as per his usual routine. It is a cold November day, and Beatty decides that from now on he will spend his lunch hour at the restaurant. However, a few days later he dies from pneumonia. Beatty's land-lady finds a new lodger for his room, a law school student. When the student moves in, he finds a bit of cardboard with an old newspaper clipping pasted to it, hanging from a string by the side of the bed. The student glances at it as he takes it down, reading Beatty's response in the Enquirer section. He crumples up the clipping and tosses it in the trash, hanging a Maxfield Parrish picture in its place.