nerves and declining income.

He spasmodically tried to write stories for the magazines, contrived plots
for novels and plays, wrote first chapters, first scenes of first acts. But
the exactions of newspaper life, the impossibility of continuous effort at
any one piece of work and his natural inertia--he was inert but neither
idle nor lazy--combined to make futile his efforts to emancipate himself
from hand-to-mouth journalism.

He had been four years a reporter and was almost twenty-six years old. He
was known throughout his profession in New York, although he had never
signed an article. One remarkable "human interest" story after another had
forced the knowledge of his abilities upon the reporters and editors of
other newspapers. And he was spoken of as one of the best and in some
respects the best "all round reporter" in the city. This meant that he was
capable to any emergency--that, whatever the subject, he could write an
accurate, graphic, consecutive and sustained story and could get it into
the editor's hands quickly.

Indeed he possessed facility to the perilous degree. What others achieved
only after long toil, he achieved without effort. This was due chiefly to
the fact that he never relaxed but was at all times the journalist, reading
voraciously newspapers, magazines and the best books, and using what he
read; observing constantly and ever trying to see something that would make
"good copy"; turning over phrases in his mind to test the value of words
both as to sound and as to meaning. He was an incessantly active man. His
great weakness was the common weakness--failure to concentrate. In Park Row
they regarded him as a brilliant success. Brilliant he was. But a success
he was not. He knew that he was a brilliant failure--and not very
brilliant.