before press time, when the lights are swimming in a smoky
haze, and the big presses downstairs are thundering their
warning to hurry, and the men are breezing in from their
runs with the grist of news that will be ground finer and
finer as it passes through the mill of copy-readers' and
editors' hands. I want to be there in the thick of the
confusion that is, after all, so orderly. I want to be
there when the telephone bells are zinging, and the
typewriters are snapping, and the messenger boys are
shuffling in and out, and the office kids are scuffling
in a corner, and the big city editor, collar off, sleeves
rolled up from his great arms, hair bristling wildly
above his green eye-shade, is swearing gently and smoking
cigarette after cigarette, lighting each fresh one at the
dying glow of the last. I would give a year of my life
to hear him say:

"I don't mind tellin' you, Beatrice Fairfax, that
that was a darn good story you got on the Millhaupt
divorce. The other fellows haven't a word that isn't
re-hash."

All of which is most unwomanly; for is not marriage
woman's highest aim, and home her true sphere? Haven't
I tried both? I ought to know. I merely have been
miscast in this life's drama. My part should have been
that of one who makes her way alone. Peter, with his thin,
cruel lips, and his shaking hands, and his haggard face
and his smoldering eyes, is a shadow forever blotting out
the sunny places in my path. I was meant to be an old