This view of him was eventually accepted by every one who came to know him, and he was made the object of a good deal of gentle chaffing. He earned probably $15 or $20 at space rates, a lamentably small amount for so intellectual looking a man, but a very large amount considering the quality of work turned out by him. Doubtless he would not have made nearly so much had not the managing editor whispered something in the ears of the assistant editor-in-chief, whose duty it was to judge of the acceptability of editorial matter offered, the editor of the Sunday's supplement, and other members of the staff who might have occasion to “turn down” the new man's contributions, or to wink at the deficiencies in his work. One day Whiskers, with many apologies and much embarrassment, asked the exchange editor to lend him a quarter, which request having been complied with, he put on his much rubbed high hat and hurried from the room. “It's funny the old man's hard up so soon,” the exchange editor said to the editorial writer at the next desk, “It's only two days since pay-day.” “Where does he sink his money?” asked the editorial writer. “His sleeping-room costs him only $3 a week, and, eating the way he does, at the cheapest hash-houses, his whole expenses can't be more than $8. No one ever sees him spend a cent. He must sink it away in a bank.” “Hasn't he any relatives?” “He never spoke of any, and he lives alone. Wotherspoon, who lodges where he does, says no one ever comes to see him.” “He certainly doesn't spend money on clothes.” “No; and he never drinks at his own expense.” “He's probably leading a double life,” said the exchange editor, jestingly, as he plunged his scissors into a Western paper, to cut out a poem by James Whitcomb Riley. Without making many acquaintances, Whiskers, by reason of his hirsute peculiarity, became known throughout the building, from the business office on the ground floor to the composing-room on the top. When he went into the latter one day and passed down the long aisle between the long row of cases and type-setting machines, with a corrected proof in his hand, a certain printer, who was “setting” up a clothing-house advertisement, could not resist the temptation to give labial imitation of the blowing of wind. The bygone joke concerning whiskers and the wind was then current, and a score of compositors took up the whistle, so that all varieties of breeze were soon being simulated simultaneously. Whiskers coloured sightly, but, save a dignified straightening of his shoulders, he showed no other sign that he was conscious of the rude allusion to his copious beard. Whiskers chose Tuesday for his day off. It was on a certain Tuesday evening that one of the reporters came into the exchange editor's room and casually remarked: “I saw your anti-shaving friend, who sits at that desk, riding out to the suburbs on a car to-day. He was all crushed up and carried a bouquet of roses.”