RICHARD COBDEN was twenty-one in 1910, and fresh from his university, when he took his first job as reader in the editorial office of _The Public Square_, a weekly magazine of opinion and protest and qualified patriotism. This was the publication of old John Higgins, at one time one of the highest-priced editorial writers in New York; but Higgins’ views had become more and more strenuous, instead of mollifying with the years, the end of which is to publish for one’s self or subside. Even in _The Public Square_ he found himself under a pull. He wanted a living out of his magazine, but did not expect to make money. He occasionally drank himself ill for a day or two. One of his aspirations was to publish a distinguished short story in each issue, the shorter the better. “But there aren’t fifty a year,” he frequently said. “There aren’t ten, but we get two or three of them.” Richard Cobden came of a well-established New York family of merchants and manufacturers. There was no traceable connection, so far as the family knew, with the English Cobdens, of whom there had been a brave Richard of free trade and free speech. Dicky’s great-grandfather was the Richard Cobden who first made the Cobden trowel, hand-forged in a little shop up Yonkers way, and made it so well that stone masons used to drive from far in back country to his shop. The Cobdens had made and dealt in hardware ever since, but the trowel was the Cobden _cachet_. Dicky was now twenty-four. His eyes were strong and so were his enthusiasms. These strengths stood him in good stead against the vast masses of evil typing and the revelations of human frailty contained in a myriad manuscript attempts. There was a mere screen between his desk and the desk of John Higgins. One winter afternoon, Dicky was interrupted by talk between the chief and the office boy: “That colored guy in the reception room won’t go ’way,” the boy said. “What guy is that?” Higgins asked. “The one I told you about two hours ago when you came back from lunch.” “What does he want?” “He’s got a story. He says he’ll wait for you.” “What’s his name?” “It ain’t a natcherl name. He says the name doesn’t matter--that you don’t know him, anyway.” “Tell him to leave his manuscript.” “He won’t. Every little while he pulls up his sock.” “Let him sit a bit longer. It’s a regular park bench out there, anyway----” It was the dragging sock that attracted Dicky Cobden--a bit of mindless art on the part of the office boy that somehow aroused the young man by the dreary manuscript pile. Dicky’s world was now full of people who thought they had the story of the age; people who wanted to see the publisher himself; people afraid to trust their manuscripts to the mails; a world of such, coming up through great tribulation, but only here and there a dragging sock. He took a chance now and volunteered to Higgins to clear that bit of seat space in the reception room, if possible.