proofs of the column, with the words "too long" scribbled against it,
Gresham continued his tale in another paragraph.

"'Dis am berry insecure,' murmured the visitor to himself,
transplanting the notes in a neighbourly way into his pocket. Mark the
sequel. The noble Caesar met, on his homeward path, an irritable
cudster. The encounter was brief. Caesar went weak in the second round,
and took the count in the third. Elated by her triumph, and hungry from
her exertions, the horned quadruped nosed the wad of paper money and
daringly devoured it. Caesar has told the court that if he is convicted
of felony, he will arraign the owner of the ostrich-like bovine on a
charge of receiving stolen goods. The owner merely ejaculates 'Black
male!'"

On his day Gresham could write the column and have a hundred lines over
by ten o'clock. I, too, found plenty of copy as a rule, though I
continued my practice of doing a few paragraphs overnight. But every
now and then fearful days would come, when the papers were empty of
material for our purposes, and when two out of every half-dozen
paragraphs which we did succeed in hammering out were returned deleted
on the editor's proof.

The tension at these times used to be acute. The head printer would
send up a relay of small and grubby boys to remind us that "On Your
Way" was fifty lines short. At ten o'clock he would come in person, and
be plaintive.

Gresham, the old hand, applied to such occasions desperate remedies. He
would manufacture out of even the most pointless item of news two
paragraphs by adding to his first the words, "This reminds us of