Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/277

 mellowness. He had a way of bestowing benignant attention upon men and women and affairs. But the only personal interest things held for him now was their news possibility, just as many good business men can appreciate only real estate values or industrial possibilities in scenery.

But while his eye for news—" nose for news" is the technical term—was so keen, his ability to make other people feel the story he saw was a different matter. As different as sympathy is from knowledge.

Every sort of passion and situation had so long ceased to mystify, charm, repell [sic] or awe him that now he was forgetting how other people who had not lived so fast were mystified, charmed, repelled, or awed. That is what one writes with. He knew too much. He had forgotten his ignorance.

He did not know what he had lost.

All he knew was that they kept repeating at the office that his stories somehow lacked their former sparkle and human interest. "For Heaven's sake," said the managing editor, one day, "let up on those old worn-out phrases. Get some new sten-