sobered him and steadied him. His natural good sense made him take himself
in hand. He saw that his success had been to a great extent a happy
accident; that to repeat it, to improve upon it he must study life, study
the art of expression. He must keep his senses open to impression. He must
work at style, enlarge his vocabulary, learn the use of words, the effect
of varying combinations of words both as to sound and as to meaning. "I
must learn to write for the people," he thought, "and that means to write
the most difficult of all styles."

He was, then and always, one of those who like others and are liked by
them, yet never seek company and so are left to themselves. As he had no
money to spare and a deep aversion to debt, he was not tempted into joining
in the time-wasting dissipations that were now open to him. He worked hard
at his profession and, when he left the office, usually went direct to his
rooms to read until far into the morning. He was often busy sixteen hours
out of the twenty-four. His day at reporting was long--from noon until
midnight, and frequently until three in the morning. But the work was far
different from the grind which is the lot of the young men striving in
other professions or in business. It was the most fascinating work
imaginable for an intelligent, thirsty mind--the study of human nature
under stress of the great emotions.

His mode of thought and his style made Mr. Bowring and Mr. King give him
much of this particular kind of reporting. So he was always observing love,
hate, jealousy, revenge, greed. He saw these passions in action in the
lives of people of all kinds and conditions. And he saw little else. The
reporter is a historian. And history is, as Gibbon says, for the most part
"a record of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind."

For many a man this has been a ruinous, one-sided development. Howard was