Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/246

 enc-es" and "up-lift" and "envi-rone-ment" and used other interesting phrases, fashionable in literary circles at that time. He sprinkled in his usual number of quotations, which showed how well-read he was and that he considered his audience well-read too, so it made pleasant feeling all around.

And it was all impressing the boy with the bright eyes, who thought it must be fine to know so much, and applauded heartily until the professor began to pronounce the reason for the sad condition of our modern literature. "The unbridled, licentious news paper press—with its ignorant hordes of hack-writers, charlatans … the morbid curiosity of the modern ubiquitous reporter," etc., as usual.

Young Woods wondered how the other reporters stood it so calmly. They were used to such things, and yawned occasionally. They were quite as willing to write about this man's views of the press as anything else—and the more words they got in the bigger would be their space-bills. And some of them asked a few questions when they