limp survivor of his once
adequate stock of frill-bosomed, roll-collared shirts, and when Devore's
scanty stock of endurance had already worn perilously near the snapping
point.

As may be recalled, Major Stone lived a life of comparative leisure from
the day he came out of the Confederate army, a seasoned veteran, until
the day he joined the staff of the Evening Press, a rank beginner; and
of these two employments one lay a matter of four decades back in a
half-forgotten past, while the other was of pressing moment, having to
do with Major Stone's enjoyment of his daily bread and other elements of
nutrition regarded as essential to the sustenance of human life. In his
military career he might have been more or less of a success. Certainly
he must have acquitted himself with some measure of personal credit; the
rank he had attained in the service and the standing he had subsequently
enjoyed among his comrades abundantly testified to that.

As a reporter he was absolutely a total loss; for, as already set forth
in some detail, he was hopelessly old-fashioned in thought and
speech--hopelessly old-fashioned and pedantic in his style of writing;
and since his mind mainly concerned itself with retrospections upon the
things that happened between April, 1861, and May, 1865, he very
naturally--and very frequently--forgot that to a newspaper reporter
every day is a new day and a new beginning, and that yesterday always is
or always should be ancient history, let alone the time-tarnished
yesterdays of forty-odd years ago. Indeed I doubt whether the major ever
comprehended that first commandment of the prentice reporter's
catechism.

Devore, himself no grand and glittering success as a newspaper man,
nevertheless had mighty little use for the pottering, ponderous old
major. Devore did not believe that bricks could be made without straw.
He considered it a waste of time and raw material to try. Through that
summer he kept the major on the payroll solely because the chief so
willed it. But, though he might not discharge the major, at least he
could bait him--and bait him Devore did--not, mind you, with words, but
with a silent, sublimated contempt more bitter and more biting than any
words.

So there, on the occasion in question, the situation stood--the major
hanging on tooth and nail to his small job, because he needed most
desperately the twelve dollars a week it brought him; the city editor
regarding him and all his manifo