known you all my life. I have so
much money that I cannot even fritter away the income."

"It must be a sad life," said I.

"And if you do not accept the sum in the spirit it is given, I'll
double it, and then you'll have trouble. You will be a rich man, then,
with all a rich man's cares and worries."

"You ought to have a trustee to take care of your money."

"It would be a small matter to bribe him off, Jack, of course, you do
not need the money now, but that is no sign you may not in the days to
come. I have known many journalists; they were ever improvident. I
want to make an exception in your case. You understand; the money is
for your old age."

"Let me tell you why a newspaper man is improvident. He earns money
only to spend it. He has a fine scorn for money as money. He cares
more for what a dollar spent has bought than what five saved might buy."

"Poor creditors!" was the melancholy interpolation.

I passed over this, and went on: "It is the work which absorbs his
whole attention. He begins at the bottom of the ladder, which is in
the garret. First, he is running about the streets at two and three in
the morning, in rain and snow and fog. The contact with the lower
classes teaches him many things. He becomes the friend of the
policeman and the vagabond. And as his mind grows broader his heart
grows in proportion. It is the comparing of the great and small which
makes us impartial and philosophical. Well, soon the reporter gets
better assignments and shorter hours. He meets the noted men and women
of the city. Suddenly from the city editor's desk his ambition turns
to Washington. He succeeds there. He now comes into the presence of
distinguished ambassadors, ministers and diplomatists. He acquires a
polish and a smattering of the languages. His work becomes a feature
of his paper. The president chooses him for a friend; he comes and
goes as he wills. Presently his eye furtively wanders to Europe. The
highest ambition of a journalist, next to being a war correspondent, is
to have a foreign post. In this capacity he meets the notable men and
women of all countries; he speaks to princes and grand dukes and
crowned heads. In a way he becomes a personage himself, a man whom
great men seek. And he speaks of the world as the poet did of the fall
of Pompeii, 'Part of which I was and all of which I saw.' Ah," as my
mind ran back over my own experiences, "what man with this to gain
wou