Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/284

 warriors lay stiff at the feet of Deadly Dick?" Newspaper men write many of them. Billy wrote one—just for fun—and the publisher asked for more, complimenting Woods on the way he did it. So with the next Billy foolishly began to take pains. He had all the time he wanted, and again the artist in him began to assert itself; he took it seriously, even though it was a burlesque, consequently became dissatisfied, began it over again in a different way, got discouraged, tore the thing up, burned the pieces and went out and borrowed a quarter. The artistic sense is very persistent, more so than the moral, it seems. He forgot to return the quarter.

Then at night, if he could get enough to drink, he would talk brilliantly about the great, beautiful, new sort of writing he was going to begin in the morning, or, equally interestedly, about your writing. He would be as sympathetic and responsive as only he could be, getting your meaning before you could express it, and then expressing it better than you could. Later in the night, he sought and often got the attention