Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/240

 ened by the prospect of many monotonous days at a desk. There are cadet brothers of foreign nobility; young men from neighboring cities who have suddenly lost their in comes, or their social positions, or else their enjoyment in such possessions. There are teachers who have grown tired of academic monotony, and naval officers who have wait ed and waited; quick-tongued Irish editors who have burned their bridges behind them, and English lieutenants who talk interestingly of army life in India and tell different stories at different times of why they left it. There are Arizona miners and Australian sheep-raisers; country poets, country parsons, gamblers, Jesuits, European nihilists, men in the employ of foreign secret-service bureaus—all sorts of men, except the bovine male, with lethargic mind and lack-lustre eye. For more than its just share of the best of brains are drawn into the feeders of this great noisy, all-devouring machine that turns out the stuff called news. It is a fascinating machine, and has a way of getting more than its share of good blood also. It is a relentless