ave you gone and done?"

And he jerked my story out of me.

"All right," he declared, "this has got to stop!"

"I knew it," I said. I had known it the minute he came in the room.

"You've got to throw up your ten-dollar job, quit working all night on
stuff that won't sell, and come on a paper and make some real money."

"I can't do it," I snapped.

"You can," said J. K.

"But I tell you I tried! I went to a paper----"

"You'll go to a dozen before I get through!"

"J. K.--I won't do it"

"Kid--you will!"

And he kept at me night after night. He was working for a New York paper
now as a special correspondent. He had a talk with his editor and got me
a chance to go on as a "cub" and write about weddings, describing the
costume of the bride. At least it was a starter, he said, and would lead
to divorces later on, and from there I might be promoted to graft. He
talked to Sue and my father about it, persuading them both to take his
side. Day by day the pressure increased. I set my young jaw doggedly and
kept on writing about my roots.

"Look here," said Joe one evening. "Your sister tells me you're sore on
the harbor. Then have a look at this." And he showed me a newspaper
clipping headed, "Padrone System Under the Dumps."

"Well, what about it?" I asked him.

"What about it? My God! Here's a chance to show up the harbor on one of
its ugliest, rottenest ideas! A dump is a pier that sticks out in the
river. We'll go there at night, get down underneath it and look at the
kids--Dago child-slaves working like hell. You say that weddings are not
in your line--all right, here's just the opposite--stuff that'll make
your women readers sit right up and sob out aloud! I don't care for
tear-jerkers myself," he added. "But even tear-jerkers are better than
Art."

"All right," I muttered savagely, "let's go and get a tear-jerker to
write!"

If I must write of this modern harbor, at least it was some satisfaction
to write about one of its ugliest sides.

We went the next night.

Joe had chosen a dump which jutted out from the Manhattan side of the
river just about opposite our house. A huge, long, shadowy pile of city
refuse of all kinds, we caught the sour breath of it as we drew near in
the darkness. There was not a sound nor a light. We climbed down onto a
greenish beam that ran along by the side underneath, about a foot from
the water, and cautiously working our way outward for a hundred yards
or more, we stop