Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/268

 happiness with his wife and children at No. so-and-so-tieth Street," which is right and normal, but not news, nor very interesting reading to you.

Look at the head-lines of to-day's paper and you may see what sort of facts this bright-eyed boy was stuffing himself with all his long working day, which, also, was abnormal, extending far into the night intended for rest. When he had finished work it was time to go to bed, and when he got up next day it was time to go to work. And to-day's work was digging out, and feeling and handling more abnormality—with little chance to recuperate, like most of the other hard-workers of the city, by rubbing unprofessionally against fellow-humans with other ways of living and working and thinking. How was he to guess at the mistake he was making? He saw in a week more bare reality, and more sorts of it, than most of you run across in a year. Therefore he thought he knew the truth about life and human nature, and smiled pityingly at the ignorance of dear old fools like his father.