a college education. In the summer-time he
had turned his hand to all sorts of things to pay his winter's
tuition. He had worked as clerk in summer hotels, as a surveyor's
assistant in laying street-railways, he had played at private
secretary, he had hawked vegetables about the streets at dawn.
Happily, he had no false pride. Chance moves quite as mysteriously as
the tides. On leaving college he had secured a minor position on one
of the daily newspapers, and had doggedly worked his way up to the
coveted position of star-reporter. Here the latent power of the
story-teller, the poet and the dramatist was awakened; in any other
pursuit the talent would have quietly died, as it has died in the
breasts of thousands who, singularly enough, have not stood in the
path of Chance.

Socially, Warrington was one of the many nobodies; and if he ever
attended dinners and banquets and balls, it was in the capacity of
reporter. But his cynical humor, which was manifest even in his youth,
saved him the rancor and envy which is the portion of the outsider.

At length the great city called him, and the lure was strong. He
answered, and the long battle was on. Sometimes he dined, sometimes he
slept; for there's an old Italian saying that he who sleeps dines. He
drifted from one paper to another, lived in prosperity one week and in
poverty the next; haggled with pawnbrokers and landladies, and
borrowed money and lent it. He never saved anything; the dreamer never
does. Then one day the end came to the long lane, as it always does to
those who keep on. A book was accepted and published; and then
followed the first play.

By and by, when his name began to figure in the dramatic news items,
and home visitors in New York returned to boast about the Warrington
"first nights," the up-state city woke and began to recollect
things--what promise Warrington had shown in his youth, how clever he
was, and all that. Nothing succeeds like success, and nobody is so
interesting as the prophet who has shaken the dust of his own country
and found honor in another. Human nature can't help itself: the women
talked of his plays in the reading-clubs, the men speculated on the
backs of envelopes what his royalties were, and the newspaper that had
given him a bread-and-butter pittance for a man's work proudly took it
upon itself to say that its columns had fostered the genius in the
growing. This was not because the editors were really proud of their
townsma