pluggin' an' savin' in the hopes that some day we'll have
money enough to get back at some people we know; but
there is some few workin' for the pure love of the
work--and I guess I'm one of them fools. Y' see, I
started in at this game when I was such a little runt
that now it's a ingrowing habit, though it is comfortin'
t' know you got a place where you c'n always come in out
of the rain, and where you c'n have your mail sent."

"This newspaper work is a curse," I remarked. "Show
me a clever newspaper man and I'll show you a failure.
There is nothing in it but the glory--and little of that.
We contrive and scheme and run about all day getting a
story. And then we write it at fever heat, searching our
souls for words that are cleancut and virile. And then
we turn it in, and what is it? What have we to show for
our day's work? An ephemeral thing, lacking the first
breath of life; a thing that is dead before
it is born. Why, any cub reporter, if he were to put
into some other profession the same amount of nerve, and
tact, and ingenuity and finesse, and stick-to-it-iveness
that he expends in prying a single story out of some
unwilling victim, could retire with a fortune in no
time."

Blackie blew down the stem of his pipe, preparatory
to re-filling the bowl. There was a quizzical light in
his black eyes. The little heap of burned matches at his
elbow was growing to kindling wood proportions. It was
common knowledge that Blackie's trick of lighting pipe or