charity or public institution; show up the abuses, and get all the
sentimentalists on your side. The paper gets sympathy for its
fearlessness in serving the public interests. It is always easy to find
plenty of testimony from ill-used convicts and grumbling pensioners."

Undoubtedly Olin Brad was a clever fellow, uncommonly well read in the
surface literatures of foreign origin, and had a keen interest in what he
called the metaphysics of his own time. He had many good qualities,
among them friendliness towards men and women struggling like himself to
get up the ladder, and he laid aside all jealousy when he advised Philip
to try his hand at some practical work on the Spectrum. What puzzled
Philip was that this fabricator of "stories" for the newspaper should
call himself a "realist." The "story," it need hardly be explained, is
newspaper slang for any incident, true or invented, that is worked up for
dramatic effect. To state the plain facts as they occurred, or might
have occurred, and as they could actually be seen by a competent
observer, would not make a story. The writer must put in color, and
idealize the scene and the people engaged in it, he must invent dramatic
circumstances and positions and language, so as to produce a "picture."
And this picture, embroidered on a commonplace incident, has got the name
of "news." The thread of fact in this glittering web the reader must
pick out by his own wits, assisted by his memory of what things usually
are. And the public likes these stories much better than the unadorned
report of facts. It is accustomed to this view of life, so much so that
it fancies it never knew what war was, or what a battle was, until the
novelists began to report them.

Mr. Brad was in the story stage of his evolution as a writer. His light
facility in it had its attraction for Philip, but down deep in his nature
he felt and the impression was deepened by watching the career of several