by the sporting editor, and confining them to the books of those
publishers who bought advertising space. This simple and statesmanlike
view the owner had frequently expressed in Mr. Stockton's hearing, so
the latter was never very sure how long his job would continue.

But Mr. Stockton had a house, a wife, and four children in New Utrecht,
that very ingenious suburb of Brooklyn. He had worked the problem out to
a nicety long ago. If he did not bring home, on the average, eighty
dollars a week, his household would cease to revolve. It simply had to
be done. The house was still being paid for on the installment plan.
There were plumbers' bills, servant's wages, clothes and schooling for
the children, clothes for the wife, two suits a year for himself, and
the dues of the Sheepshead Golf Club--his only extravagance. A simple
middle-class routine, but one that, once embarked upon, turns into a
treadmill. As I say, eighty dollars a week would just cover expenses. To
accumulate any savings, pay for life insurance, and entertain friends,
Stockton had to rise above that minimum. If in any week he fell below
that figure he could not lie abed at night and "snort his fill," as the
Elizabethan song naïvely puts it.

There you have the groundwork of many a domestic drama.

Mr. Stockton worked pretty hard at the newspaper office to earn his
fifty dollars. He skimmed faithfully all the books that came in, wrote
painstaking reviews, and took care to run cuts on his literary page on
Saturdays "to give the stuff kick," as the proprietor ordered. Though he
did so with reluctance, he was forced now and then to approach the book
publishers on the subject of advertising. He gave earnest and honest
thought to his literary department, and was once praised by Mr. Howells
in _Harper's Magazine_ for the honourable quality of his criticisms.