This reporter was a good reporter. He knew a human-interest story when he met it walking in the road. He turned about and tagged Papa Finkelstein to his domicile and there, after briefly inspecting the Finkelstein household in all its wealth of picturesque destitution, he secured the names and the address from the head of it, who perhaps gave the desired information all the more readily because he had not the slightest idea of what use this inquiring stranger wished to make of it. Half an hour later the reporter was saying to the irritable functionary in charge of the _Advocate's_ news desk: "Oh, so-so; just fair to middling, most of them; about the usual run of shad. But, say, I've got one bird of a case. I dug it up myself--it's not down on any of the records I got from the charity people. When it comes to being plumb down and out none of them has anything on the meek and lowly Finkelsteins." "Good!" said the news editor. "You might lead with it if you want to. No, I guess you'd better run 'em alphabetically--it won't do to be playing favourites." Mark now, how a little flame may kindle a large blaze: The afternoon half sister of the _Morning Advocate_ was the _Evening Dispatch_. Between the two papers, owned as they were by the same gentleman and issued from the same printshop, a bitter rivalry prevailed; it generally does in such instances. On Tuesday morning the city editor of the _Evening Dispatch_ ran an agile and practiced eye through the story the _Advocate_ had printed. With his shears he chopped out the first column of it. With his pencil he ringed one paragraph in the scissored section and then he lifted his voice and called to him a young woman professionally known as Betty Gwin, who sat in the city room at a desk somewhat withdrawn from copy readers, rewriters and leg men. This distinction of comparative aloofness was hers by right, she being a special-feature writer, under yearly contract, and, therefore, belonging to the aristocracy of the craft. After the custom of her sex Miss Betty Gwin--whose real name, I may state, in confidence, was Ferguson--first put a hand up to be sure that her hair was quite right and then put it behind her to be sure her belt made proper connection with her skirt at the back; and then she answered her superior's call. Answering it, all about her betokened confidence and competence. And why shouldn't it? As a pen-smith this young person acknowledged no superiors anywhere. Her troupe of trained performing adjectives was admitted to be the smartest in town. Moreover, she was artistically ambidextrous. Having written a story she would illustrate it with her own hand. Her drawings were replete with lithesome curves; so, too, was her literary style. None but a Betty Gwin could write what she wrote; none but a Betty Gwin properly illustrate it afterward.