-lights Helen Page raced
against time, against the minions of the law, against sudden death, to
beat the midnight train out of Boston, to assure the man she loved of
the one thing that could make his life worth living.

And close against her heart, buttoned tight beneath her great-coat,
the sailorman smiled in the darkness, his long watch over, his soul at
peace, his duty well performed.

Chapter 6. THE MIND READER

When Philip Endicott was at Harvard, he wrote stories of undergraduate
life suggested by things that had happened to himself and to men he
knew. Under the title of "Tales of the Yard" they were collected in book
form, and sold surprisingly well. After he was graduated and became a
reporter on the New York Republic, he wrote more stories, in each of
which a reporter was the hero, and in which his failure or success in
gathering news supplied the plot. These appeared first in the magazines,
and later in a book under the title of "Tales of the Streets." They also
were well received.

Then came to him the literary editor of the Republic, and said: "There
are two kinds of men who succeed in writing fiction--men of genius and
reporters. A reporter can describe a thing he has seen in such a way
that he can make the reader see it, too. A man of genius can describe
something he has never seen, or any one else for that matter, in such a
way that the reader will exclaim: 'I have never committed a murder; but
if I had, that's just the way I'd feel about it.' For instance, Kipling
tells us how a Greek pirate, chained to the oar of a trireme, suffers;
how a mother rejoices when her baby crawls across her breast. Kipling
has never been a mother or a pirate, but he convinces you he knows how
each of them feels. He can do that because he is a genius; you cannot
do it because you are not. At college you wrote only of what you saw at
college; and now that you are in the newspaper business all your tales
are only of newspaper work. You merely report what you see. So, if you
are doomed to write only of what you see, then the best thing for you to
do is to see as many things as possible. You must see all kinds of life.
You must progress. You must leave New York, and you had better go to
London."

"But on the Republic," Endicott pointed out, "I get a salary. And in
London I should have to sweep a crossing."

"Then," said the literary editor, "you could write a story about a man
who swept a crossing."

It was not alone