Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/193

 He remembered how it was in his younger days; he could not stand being treated in that arrogant fashion by city editors, and once he had lost his place on a certain paper because he could not stand it. He could recall the scene very vividly, and how he had enjoyed telling the bullying city editor just what he unreservedly thought of him. The tale is still handed down in that office. And now he was very much the same sort of bully himself. He had not expected to turn out that way. It seemed too bad.

He wondered what his men unreservedly thought of him. To be sure he was always liberal about letting them have days off, and when they had been ill told them, in a blushing, self-conscious manner, that he was glad to see them back. Also he was obliging about lending money in the office, and those who were slow pay he never dunned—which in newspaper men is a rare trait. And whenever any of the men died, which is not a rare occurrence in a newspaper office, he was the one to get up the subscription list for the flowers, or, as it more often happened, for the widow's rent. But he had an idea that