“Oh, somebody to ‘go for,’” Mr. Harrison answered; “somebody to give a black eye to. To say that the sheriff’s about to seize his property, or that his son’s in jail in Chicago, or some pleasant little news like that. If I don’t have a few such items, people will say the Horseshoe’s growing dull.” Dick protested that he was not well enough acquainted in Hot Springs to give advice on so important a matter; and while he was speaking the door opened and a short, chunky young man walked in. “Well, what luck, Howell?” Harrison asked. “Not a line,” the newcomer replied. “Everything’s too quiet.” “That’s so,” said Harrison. “Everything’s too quiet to live. Come here till I introduce you to another newspaper man, Howell. This is Mr. Sumner, of The New York Transport. Our reporter, Mr. Sumner; Mr. Howell, from Waco, Texas.” Mr. Howell, of Waco, Texas, was delighted to meet a newspaper man from New York, and said so. The honor so weighed upon him that in a minute or two he suggested:-- “There’s a saloon right next do’, gentlemen. Will you take a little walk?” Once more Dick had to decline either to walk or smile. But Mr. Howell was not to be put off so easily. “You must find things pretty stupid down here,” he said, “after New York. This town’s growin’ stupider every day. But if you’ll wait till the paper goes to press, at three o’clock, I’ll take you to a neat little dollar limit game up in the Burnt Rag. We have a game there every night. It’ll make a night’s sport for you.” “Much obliged,” Dick laughed, “but I have a night’s sport waiting for me in my room. I have about two more columns of solid nonpareil to write before breakfast time.” As he walked back to his room Dick was in an unhappy frame of mind. “I’ve read of such newspaper offices as that,” he said to himself, “but I had no idea they really existed. The trouble is that when people read about such a place, they imagine that all newspaper offices are the same. If I only had Darling or Dr. Goode here to talk to Mose Harrison and Mr. Howell, of Waco, Texas! And to see the revolvers and bowie knives, and hear about the ‘turning down’ and ‘the saloon next do’’! Darling would laugh at it; but, on the whole, I shouldn’t like Dr. Goode to see it. He has such a high idea of the profession that it would make him feel very sore.” Dick’s days in Hot Springs were given to sight-seeing, and his nights to writing, and when at the end of several weeks he started for Texas and New Orleans, he had written a large number of letters. He had had the satisfaction of seeing many of them in print, too; for the New York papers came rapidly by rail, and he found that the letters were being copied as widely as the others had been.