over the book in my hand and read the title. "Hard Times," he
said, with a little laugh. "I guess so. What do you say? I think you
will do. Better come along and let me give you a note to him now."

As in a dream, I walked across the street with him to his office and
got the letter which was to make me, half-starved and homeless, rich as
Croesus, it seemed to me. . . .

When the sun rose, I washed my face and hands in a dog's drinking
trough, pulled my clothes into such shape as I could, and went with Bob
to his new home. That parting over, I walked down to 23 Park Row and
delivered my letter to the desk editor in the New York News
Association, up on the top floor.

He looked me over a little doubtfully, but evidently impressed with the
early hours I kept, told me that I might try. He waved me to a desk,
bidding me wait until he had made out his morning book of assignments;
and with such scant ceremony was I finally introduced to Newspaper Row,
that had been to me like an enchanted land. After twenty-seven years
of hard work in it, during which I have been behind the scenes of most
of the plays that go to make up the sum of the life of the metropolis,
it exercises the old spell over me yet. If my sympathies need
quickening, my point of view adjusting, I have only to go down to Park
Row at eventide, when the crowds are hurrying homeward and the City
Hall clock is lighted, particularly when the snow lies on the grass in
the park, and stand watching them a while, to find all things coming
right. It is Bob who stands by and watches with me then, as on that
night.

The assignment that fell to my lot when the book was made out, the
first against which my name was written in a New York editor's book,
was a lunch of some sort at the Astor House. I have forgotten what was
the special occasion. I remember the bearskin hats of the Old Guard in
it, but little else. In a kind of haze I beheld half the savory viands
of earth spread under the eyes and nostrils of a man who had not tasted
food for the third day. I did not ask for any. I had reached that
stage of starvation that is like the still centre of a cyclone, when no
hunger is left. But it may be that a touch of it all crept into my
report; for when the editor had read it, he said briefly:

"You will do. Take that desk, and report at ten every morning, sharp."

That night, when I was dismissed from the office, I went up the Bowery
to No. 185, where a Dani