The Great God Success | Page 2

easily fell apart:
He is coming home at one in the morning, worn out, sick at heart from
the day's buffetings. As he puts his key into the latch, the door opens.
There stands a handsome girl; her face is flushed; her eyes are bright;
her lips are held up for him to kiss; she shows no trace of a day that
began hours before his and has been a succession of exasperations and
humiliations against which her sensitive nature, trained in the home of
her father, a distinguished up-the-state Judge, gives her no protection,
"Victory," she whispers, her arms about his neck and her head upon his
coat collar. "Victory! We are seventy-two cents ahead on the week, and
everything paid up!"
Mr. King opened his eyes--they had been closed less than five seconds.
"Well, let it be twenty--though just why I'm sure I don't know. And
we'll give you a four weeks' trial. When will you begin?"
"Now," answered the young man, glancing about the room. "And I
shall try to show that I appreciate your consideration, whether I deserve
it or not."
It was a large bare room, low of ceiling. Across one end were five
windows overlooking from a great height the tempest that rages about
the City Hall day and night with few lulls and no pauses. Mr. King's
roll-top desk was at the first window. Under each of the other windows
was a broad flat table desk--for copy-readers. At the farthest of these
sat the City Editor--thin, precise-looking, with yellow skin, hollow
cheeks, ragged grey-brown moustache, ragged scant grey-brown hair
and dark brown eyes. He looked nervously tired and, because brown
was his prevailing shade, dusty. He rose as Mr. King came with young
Howard.
"Here, Mr. Bowring, is a young man from Yale. He wishes you to teach
him how to write. Mr. Howard, Mr. Bowring. I hope you gentlemen
will get on comfortably together."
Mr. King went back to his desk. Mr. Bowring and Howard looked each

at the other. Mr. Bowring smiled, with good-humour, without cordiality.
"Let me see, where shall we put you?" And his glance wandered along
the rows of sloping table-desks--those nearer the windows lighted by
daylight; those farther away, by electric lamps. Even on that cool,
breezy August afternoon the sunlight and fresh air did not penetrate far
into the room.
"Do you see the young man with the beautiful fair moustache," said Mr.
Bowring, "toiling away in his shirt-sleeves--there?"
"Near the railing at the entrance?"
"Precisely. I think I will put you next him." Mr. Bowring touched a
button on his desk and presently an office boy--a mop of auburn curls,
a pert face and gangling legs in knickerbockers--hurried up with a "Yes,
Sir?"
"Please tell Mr. Kittredge that I would like to speak to him and--please
scrape your feet along the floor as little as possible."
The boy smiled, walking away less as if he were trying to terrorize park
pedestrians by a rush on roller skates. Kittredge and Howard were
made acquainted and went toward their desks together. "A few
moments--if you will excuse me--and I'm done," said Kittredge
motioning Howard into the adjoining chair as he sat and at once bent
over his work.
Howard watched him with interest, admiration and envy. The reporter
was perhaps twenty-five years old--fair of hair, fair of skin,
goodlooking in a pretty way. His expression was keen and experienced
yet too self-complacent to be highly intelligent. He was rapidly
covering sheet after sheet of soft white paper with bold, loose
hand-writing. Howard noticed that at the end of each sentence he made
a little cross with a circle about it, and that he began each paragraph
with a paragraph sign. Presently he scrawled a big double cross in the
centre of the sheet under the last line of writing and gathered up his
sheets in the numbered order. "Done, thank God," he said. "And I hope
they won't butcher it."

"Do you send it to be put in type?" asked Howard.
"No," Kittredge answered with a faint smile. "I hand it in to Mr.
Bowring--the City Editor, you know. And when the copyreaders come
at six, it will be turned over to one of them. He reads it, cuts it down if
necessary, and writes headlines for it. Then it goes upstairs to the
composing room--see the box, the little dumb-waiter, over there in the
wall?--well, it goes up by that to the floor above where they set the type
and make up the forms."
"I'm a complete ignoramus," said Howard, "I hope you'll not mind my
trying to find out things. I hope I shall not bore you."
"Glad to help you, I'm sure. I had to go through this two years ago
when I came here from