There was nothing repelling in Mr. Hanks. Indeed, he seemed rather a mild man, but when he turned on me a pair of large spectacles I felt suddenly as though I were a curious insect being examined under magnifying-glasses. Mr. Hanks, with his thin, pale face and dishevelled hair, appeared more an entomologist than a militant editor. In a moment, however, I saw him in action. He shot his bare arm across the littered desk, he seemed to try to destroy his brass bell, and with every ring he shouted, "Copy--copy!" Office-boys sprang from the floor and dropped from the ceiling; they tumbled over one another in their hurry to answer the summons. He reprimanded them for being asleep. I thought that they would be ordered to bring Mr. Malcolm a chair, but instead one received from a waving hand a bunch of paper, and they retired as they had come, into the floor and the ceiling. I was under the magnifying-glasses again. "Well, Mr. Malcolm," said Mr. Hanks, leaning back in his chair and clasping his hands behind his head, "ever done any newspaper work?" "No, sir," I answered boldly. "I have just graduated from McGraw." "And where in the devil is McGraw?" he asked in a slow, wondering voice. How I wished for Doctor Todd! In five minutes this self-confident journalist would blush for his own ignorance. But Doctor Todd not being here to confound him with facts, there was nothing better for me to do than to hand him the letter. His face lighted with a smile as he read it. The effect was so good that I followed it with Mr. Pound's. The effect of Mr. Pound's was so good that I was confident that I should soon be a journalist in fact, for Mr. Hanks read it over twice. "My boy," he began, regarding me through his spectacles benignly. At that familiar address my heart leaped. "Let me give you some advice." My heart fell. "Take those letters and lock them up to read when you are ten years older. Then start out and go from office to office until you get a place. Don't be discouraged. Some day you'll break in somewhere." "But I want to work on _The Record_," I cried. "It's politics agree with mine--it is Republican. It is a respectable paper. It----" Mr. Hanks was leaning over his desk. "Pile," he said, addressing the fat man who sat across from him, "that was a good beat we had on the Worthing divorce--I see all the evenings are after it hard. We must have a second-day story." "I am ready," I said a little louder, "to begin with any kind of work." Mr. Hanks looked up as though surprised that I was still there. "You've come at a bad time," he said brusquely. "Summer--we are letting men go every day. But don't get discouraged. I worked four months for my first job, and I didn't come from McGraw either. Keep going the rounds." Then he seemed to forget my existence and resumed his game of checkers.