Mr. Alfred Stephenson had hard work to keep his head above water as editor of the _Los Angeles Advertiser_ at Los Angeles. The struggle for existence gave him considerable cause for worry, and this was due to the fact that Mrs. Olinda Stephenson wished to cut a figure in society, a figure that was not at all compatible with her husband's income. Mr. Stephenson was therefore often called upon to battle with temptation, but for a long time he successfully withstood all offers the acceptance of which would have lowered him in his own estimation. The consequence was that financial discussion had become chronic in the Stephenson household, and, like a Minister of Finance, he was compelled to develop considerable energy in order to diminish the financial demands of the opposition or render them void by having recourse to passive resistance. This constant worry gradually exhausted Mr. Stephenson, however, and the check-book, which, to save his face, he always carried with him, was nothing more than a piece of useless bluff. He could therefore scarcely be blamed for eagerly seizing the opportunity offered him one evening at a bar in Los Angeles, when a stranger agreed to furnish him regularly with news from the Navy Department for the _Evening Standard_. The affair had, of course, to be conducted with the greatest secrecy. The stranger told Stephenson that a clerk in the Navy Department was willing to send him such news for two hundred dollars per annum. The result was astonishing. The articles signed "Our Naval Correspondent" soon attracted wide attention, and the large fees received from San Francisco quite covered the deficits in the Stephenson household. Mrs. Olinda was soon rolling in money and the tiresome financial discussions came to a speedy end. From that time on Stephenson regularly received secret communications, which were mailed at Pasadena, and as to the origin of which he himself remained in complete ignorance. But these same messages enabled the _Evening Standard_ in a brief space of time to establish a national reputation for its naval news, which was at no time officially contradicted.