Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/241

 machine, and is apt to squeeze the best out of strong men, throwing them forth again, when least expected, old and useless before they reach what should be the prime of life.

Occasionally you hear of a well-known correspondent who signs his initials, or of an editor who wins fame or else notoriety. No one tells of these others who, while they live, fill most of the paper, and are broken down before forty, having written on every sort of interest and every sort of person in the great seething city—except the one they know the most about.

There were several stories of why brilliant Billy Woods came North to become a newspaper man, and one of them was a love-story. The younger men on the staff used to say that the only reason he went into this work was that his father forbade it. The women in the office were inclined to believe the love-story. However, he would eventually have drifted into it; inevitably, because he was a born reporter.