He had picked up a good many stock newspaper phrases, like “repaired to the scene of the disaster,” and “a catastrophe was imminent,” and “the last sad offices were rendered,” and “a life hung in the balance,” and such rot, and he had a literary ambition that would have put the valedictorian of a female seminary to the blush. He had an idea that my work was crude and jerky, so he melted down a lot of ineffable poetical bosh into paragraphs hot enough to set the columns afire. As for the story, you couldn’t find it for the adjectives. He may have been a wonder at selling “The Life of U. S. Grant,” but he couldn’t write English for publication in a daily paper. When he turned the stuff in, the city editor gave a look at it, put about three swift questions to him, and the cat was out of the bag. It took no time at all to sweat the story out of him, and they sent that book-agent downstairs so quickly that he never came back. The whole office went roaring over the way I’d done the paper, and the first thing I knew I was sent for, and the managing editor told me that if I’d take the Keeley cure for four months he’d give me the Sunday editor’s place and forget the episode. The time I put in at Los Gatos taking chloride of gold was the darkness that preceded my financial dawn. When I graduated I hated the smell of whiskey so much that I couldn’t eat an ordinary baker’s mince-pie. Six months after that I was sent for by the New York _Gazette_, where I am now drawing a salary that makes my life in San Francisco seem insipid. * * * * * Coffee John folded the document carefully and restored it to his pocket with consideration. “Thet’s the wye ’e wrote it darn for me, an’ I’ve read it every year since. Yer see, gents, Sol. Bauer ’avin’ gort the idea I was, in a wye, the means of his restorashing to respeckability, an’ by wye of memorisink them three bums, ’as myde a practice o’ sendin’ me a cheque an a small gift every year, with instrucshings to celebryte the ’appy event by givin’ the best dinner money can buy to the fust three blokes as turns up here after 8.30 on the thirteenth dye of October, an’ I sye it’s ’andsome of ’im. Nar, I propose thet we all drink ’is very good ’ealth again, after w’ich, them as is agreeable will tell ’is own story for the mutual pleasure of the assembled company ’ere present.” The three men agreed, and filled their glasses to the grateful memory of Solomon Bauer of the Great Bauer Syndicate. CHAPTER II JAMES WISWELL COFFIN 3D