ene in the
reporters' room of the _Morning Beacon_, I will repay the favor by
keeping strictly my promises set forth above.

I was doing space-work on the _Beacon_, hoping to be put on a salary.
Some one had cleared with a rake or a shovel a small space for me at
the end of a long table piled high with exchanges, _Congressional
Records_, and old files. There I did my work. I wrote whatever the
city whispered or roared or chuckled to me on my diligent wanderings
about its streets. My income was not regular.

One day Tripp came in and leaned on my table. Tripp was something in
the mechanical department--I think he had something to do with the
pictures, for he smelled of photographers' supplies, and his hands
were always stained and cut up with acids. He was about twenty-five
and looked forty. Half of his face was covered with short, curly red
whiskers that looked like a door-mat with the "welcome" left off. He
was pale and unhealthy and miserable and fawning, and an assiduous
borrower of sums ranging from twenty-five cents to a dollar. One
dollar was his limit. He knew the extent of his credit as well as the
Chemical National Bank knows the amount of H2O that collateral will
show on analysis. When he sat on my table he held one hand with the
other to keep both from shaking. Whiskey. He had a spurious air of
lightness and bravado about him that deceived no one, but was useful
in his borrowing because it was so pitifully and perceptibly assumed.

This day I had coaxed from the cashier five shining silver dollars as
a grumbling advance on a story that the Sunday editor had reluctantly
accepted. So if I was not feeling at peace with the world, at least
an armistice had been declared; and I was beginning with ardor to
write a description of the Brooklyn Bridge by moonlight.

"Well, Tripp," said I, looking up at him rather impatiently, "how goes
it?" He was looking to-day more miserable, more cringing and haggard
and downtrodden than I had ever seen him. He was at that stage of
misery where he drew your pity so fully that you longed to kick him.

"Have you got a dollar?" asked Tripp, with his most fawning look
and his dog-like eyes that blinked in the narrow space between his
high-growing matted beard and his low-growing matted hair.

"I have," said I; and again I said, "I have," more loudly and
inhospitably, "and four besides. And I had hard work corkscrewing
them out of old Atkinson, I can tell you. And I drew them," I