coverlet. I am one of the
dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology
addressed to your understanding, a tramp.'

"'What the hell--?'

"'Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements
and multifarious--'

"'Quit it!' he shouted. 'What do you want?'

"'I want money.'

"He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed
a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, 'This is no bank.'

"'Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your
leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how
does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you
open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can
they be happy without it?'

"I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the
unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I
liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he'd do
business with me.

"'But mind you,' he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into
my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, 'mind you, I won't
stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have
a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of
sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social
strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go
and life, crisp and crackling and interesting--tumble?'

"And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar.

"'Don't forget the local color!' he shouted after me through the door.

"And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me.

"The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. 'Got the bounce,
eh?'

"'Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,' I chortled, waving the copy paper;
'not the bounce, but a detail. I'll be City Editor in three months, and
then I'll make you jump.'

"And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair
of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage
consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck
and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him
close."

"But how could you, Leith," I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad
strong before me, "how could you treat him so barbarously?"

Leith laughed dryly. "My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you
your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereoty