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 awhile, 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 books, 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 felt. 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 Danish family kept a boarding-house up under the roof. I
had work and wages now, and could pay. On the stairs I fell in a swoon and
lay there till some one stumbled over me in the dark and carried me in. My
strength had at last given out.

So began my life as a newspaper man.

BOUND COASTWISE[20]

RALPH D. PAINE

[Footnote 20: From _The Old Merchant Marine_, by Ralph D. Paine, in _The
Chronicles of America_ Series. Copyright, 1919, by the Yale University
Press. By permission of the author and of the publishers.]

One thinks of the old merchant marine in terms of the clipper ship and
distant ports. The coasting trade has been overlooked in song and story;
yet, since the year 1859, its fleets have always been larger and more
important than the American deep-water commerce nor hav