Before starting out upon his first try at fortune, he gazed into the mirror above his wash-stand and for a long time studied his face, wondering if the men he was going to meet would read his record there. The forehead was broad, and about the grey eyes and the wide mouth were the little puckering wrinkles that announce the dreamer. The chin was the chin of the man of will. In health the face would have suggested a rare combination of idealism and will-power; but now there brooded over it that hesitancy, that blanched gloom, which come from living within the dark shadows of prison. No one looking at his thin, slightly stooping figure would have ever guessed that here was Dave Aldrich, the great half-back of '95. After filling the forenoon by writing for his belongings, which his New Jersey landlady had promised to keep till he should send for them, and by dreaming of the future, David set out for the hurly-burly that seethes within and without the sky-supporting buildings of Park Row. At the entrance to the first newspaper office, his courage suddenly all flowed from him. Would he be recognised as a jail-bird? His ill-fitting prison-made suit, that clothed him in reproach, that burned him--was it not an announcement of his record? He turned away in panic. But he had to go in, and fiercely mastering his throbbing agitation, he returned to the office and entered. The city editor, a sharp-faced young man, after hearing that David had no newspaper experience, snapped out in a quick voice, "Sorry, for I need a man--but I've got no time to break in a green hand," and the following instant was shouting to a "copy" boy for proofs. At the next place the slip on which David had been required to write his business, came back to him with the two added words, "Nothing doing." At the third place the returned slip bore the statement, "Got all the men I need." The fourth editor, whom he saw, gave him a short negative. The fifth editor sent word by mouth of the office boy that his staff was full. It required all David's determination to mount to the sixth office, that of an able and aggressively respectable paper. The boy who took in his request to the city editor returned at once and led David across a large dingy room, with littered floor, and grime-streaked windows. Young men, coatless, high-geared, sat at desks scribbling with pencils and clicking typewriters; boys, answering the quick cries of "copy!" scurried about through the heavy tobacco smoke. The room was a rectangular solid of bustling intensity. The city editor, who occupied a corner of the room, waved David to a chair. Again David repeated the formula of his desire, and again he was asked his experience. "I've had no experience on a paper," he replied, "but I've done a lot of writing in a private way."