Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/256

 Each one of these is different, but all have this in common: Every one of them is acquired, according to the laws of compensation, at the expense of certain other senses or sensibilities.

Young Billy Woods, with his shirt-bosom shaking as he saw the bigness of "the story" in what he was hearing, did not stop to see what the publication of it would mean to his host's friends. He did not see, because, though he looked at the same facts, it was not from the same point of view. They were business men and it was their job to make deals.

He was a newspaper man and it was his job to make interesting reading. It was their right to make deals, even though they would thereby render certain securities of other worthy men and women almost worthless. So, was it not his right to make interesting reading even though it would hurt the schemes of eminently solvent men for getting richer?

But, of course, he realized now, as he stayed awake at night, that it was outrageous to print facts related, very unwisely, at a