He looked about my age, but was a few years older. His face was as smooth as the head of a new axe, and had something else chopper-like about it. He reminded me of pictures I had seen in the advertisement pages of American magazines; pictures showing a wedge-like human face, from the lips of which some such an assertion as "It's _you_ I want!" was supposed to be issuing. I subsequently learned that this Mr. Charles N. Pierce had spent several years in New York, and that he was credited with having largely increased the circulation of the _Daily Gazette_ since taking over his present position. He suddenly raised the even, mechanical tone in which he dictated, and snapped out the words: "Right. Get on with those now, and come back in five minutes." Then he switched his gaze on to me, like a searchlight. "Mr. Mordan, I believe?" I admitted the charge with my best smile. Mr. Pierce ignored the smile, and said: "University man?" Accepting his cue as to brevity, I said: "Yes. Corpus Christi, Cambridge." He pursed his thin lips. "Ah well," he said, "you'll get over that." In his way he was perfectly right; but his way was as coldly offensive as any I had ever met with. "Well, Mr. Mordan, I've only three things to say. Reports for this paper must be sound English; they must be live stories; they must be short. You might ask a boy to show you the reporters' room. You'll get your assignment presently. As a day man, you'll be here from ten to six. That's all." And his blade of a face descended into the heart of a sheaf of papers. As I reached the door the blade rose again, to emit a kind of thin bark: "Ah!" I turned on my heel, waiting. "Do you know anything about spelling?" I tried to look pleasant, as I said I thought I was to be relied on in this. "Well, ask my secretary for tickets for the meeting at Memorial Hall to-day; something to do with spelling. Don't do more than thirty or forty lines. Right." And the blade fell once more, leaving me free to make my escape, which I did with a considerable sense of relief. I found the secretary a meek little clerk, with a curious hidden vein of timid facetiousness. He supplied me with the necessary ticket and a hand-bill of particulars. Then he said: "Mr. Pierce is quite bright and pleasant this morning." "Oh, is he?" I said. "Yes, very--for him. He's all right, you know, when you get into his way. Of course, he's a real hustler--cleverest journalist in London, they say." "Really!" I think I introduced the right note of admiration. At all events, it seemed to please this little pale-eyed rabbit of a man, who, as I found later, was reverentially devoted to his bullying chief, and positively took a kind of fearful joy in being more savagely browbeaten by Pierce than any other man in the building. A queer taste, but a fortunate one for a man in his particular position.