Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/209

 who sighed and went back to his seat on the string-piece of the Morgue dock, snapped cigarette butts with yellow-stained fingers at the foolish, futile waves, and wished there were a war, so he could go as a correspondent and do big things and get decorated for bravery.

In reporting, as in everything else, to learn your job you have to begin at a dreary bottom. Even if there had been a war just then, no paper would have sent Knox, because he was not good enough. Besides, he was not modelled for a newspaper man in the first place, as will be made clear.

On one day in every seven he was not a newspaper man. Wednesday was his day off. He always arose early and dressed excitedly, instead of sleeping late, as most working people do on a holiday; then putting a pipe in his pocket, he took the L train for Cortlandt Street, jumped on the ferry, and when in the middle of the stream carefully doubled up his newspaper, gravely