Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/92

 agreeable. There was the bright, windy day he was sent down to the proving-grounds on Sandy Hook to write about the new disappearing gun-carriage (which covered him and the rest of the party with yellow-powder dust), and he lunched with the Secretary of the Navy, who was very jolly and gave him a half-column interview. There was Izi Zim, the pipe-maker, up on Third Avenue, and the Frenchman on Twenty-third Street, who taught skirt-dancing; and there was his good friend, Garri-Boulu, the old Hindoo sailor, who had landed on one of the big Calcutta ships suffering with beriberi, and was now slowly dying in the Presbyterian Hospital because he wouldn't lose caste by eating meat, and was so polite that he cried for fear he was giving the young doctors too much trouble. It took him into odd places, this news-gathering, and made him meet queer people, and it was a fascinating life for all its disagreeableness, and it was never monotonous, for it was never alike two days in succession. It was full of contrasts—almost dramatic contrasts, sometimes. One afternoon he was sent to cover a convention of