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Baker, an assistant editor for the
Sunday paper, took scat at his desk and began the task of examining the
packets. His face could not display any particular interest because he
had been at the same work for nearly a fortnight.
The first long envelope he opened was from a woman. There was a neat
little manuscript accompanied by a letter which explained that the
writer was a widow who was trying to make her living by her pen and
who, further, hoped that the generosity of the editor of the Eclipse
would lead him to give her article the opportunity which she was sure it
deserved. She hoped that the editor would pay her as well as possible
for it, as she needed the money greatly. She added that her brother was
a reporter on the Little Rock Sentinel and he had declared that her
literary style was excellent. Baker really did not read this note. His vast
experience of a fortnight had enabled him to detect its kind in two
glances. He unfolded the manuscript, looked at it woodenly and then
tossed it with the letter to the top of his desk, where it lay with the other
corpses. None could think of widows in Arkansas, ambitious from the
praise of the reporter on the Little Rock Sentinel, waiting for a crown
of literary glory and money. In the next envelope a man using the
note-paper of a Boston journal begged to know if the accompanying
article would be acceptable; if not it was to be kindly returned in the

enclosed stamped envelope. It was a humourous essay on trolley cars.
Adventuring through the odd scraps that were come to the great mill,
Baker paused occasionally to relight his pipe.
As he went through envelope after envelope, the desks about him
gradually were occupied by young men who entered from the hall with
their faces still red from the cold of the streets. For the most part they
bore the unmistakable stamp of the American college. They had that
confident poise which is easily brought from the athletic field.
Moreover, their clothes were quite in the way of being of the newest
fashion. There was an air of precision about their cravats and linen. But
on the other hand there might be with them some indifferent westerner
who was obliged to resort to irregular means and harangue startled
shop-keepers in order to provide himself with collars of a strange kind.
He was usually very quick and brave of eye and noted for his inability
to perceive a distinction between his own habit and the habit of others,
his western character preserving itself inviolate amid a confusion of
manners.
The men, coming one and one, or two and two, flung badinage to all
corners of the room. Afterward, as they wheeled from time to time in
their chairs, they bitterly insulted each other with the utmost
good-nature, taking unerring aim at faults and riddling personalities
with the quaint and cynical humour of a newspaper office. Throughout
this banter, it was strange to note how infrequently the men smiled,
particularly when directly engaged in an encounter.
A wide door opened into another apartment where were many little
slanted tables, each under an electric globe with a green shade. Here a
curly-headed scoundrel with a corncob pipe was hurling paper balls the
size of apples at the head of an industrious man who, under these
difficulties, was trying to draw a picture of an awful wreck with
ghastly-faced sailors frozen in the rigging. Near this pair a lady was
challenging a German artist who resembled Napoleon III. with having
been publicly drunk at a music hall on the previous night. Next to the
great gloomy corridor of this sixteenth floor was a little office presided
over by an austere boy, and here waited in enforced patience a little

dismal band of people who wanted to see the Sunday editor.
Baker took a manuscript and after glancing about the room, walked
over to a man at another desk, Here is something that. I think might
do," he said. The man at the desk read the first two pages. " But where
is the photogragh " " he asked then. "There should be a photograph
with this thing."
" Oh, I forgot," said Baker. He brought from his desk a photograph of
the babe that had been born lacking arms and one eye. Baker's superior
braced a knee against his desk and settled back to a judicial attitude. He
took the photograph and looked at it impassively. " Yes," he said, after
a time, " that's a pretty good thing. You better show that to Coleman
when he comes in."
In the little office where the dismal band waited, there had been a sharp
hopeful