October, full of sunshine and the joy of living, and from the
great lawn in front of the Home you could see half over
Connecticut and across the waters of the Sound to Oyster Bay.

Upon Sam Ward, however, the beauties of Nature were wasted.
When, the night previous, he had been given the assignment he
had sulked, and he was still sulking. Only a year before he
had graduated into New York from a small up-state college and
a small up-state newspaper, but already he was a "star" man,
and Hewitt, the city editor, humored him.

"What's the matter with the story?" asked the city editor.
"With the speeches and lists of names it ought to run to two
columns."

"Suppose it does!" exclaimed Ward; "anybody can collect
type-written speeches and lists of names. That's a messenger
boy's job. Where's there any heart-interest in a Wall Street
broker like Flagg waving a silver trowel and singing, 'See
what a good boy am!' and a lot of grownup men in pinafores
saying, 'This stone is well and truly laid.' Where's the
story in that?"

"When I was a reporter," declared the city editor, "I used to
be glad to get a day in the country."

"Because you'd never lived in the country," returned Sam. "If
you'd wasted twenty-six years in the backwoods, as I did,
you'd know that every minute you spend outside of New York
you're robbing yourself."