iege Miss Tibbs,
all of whose recent buds of rhyme had been hot-housed into inky blossom
during the week, and after a long absence the youth returned with a
somewhat abrupt quatrain, entitled "The Parisians of Old," which she had
produced while he waited--only four lines, according to the measure they
meted, which was not regardful of art--less than a drop in the bucket,
or, to preserve the figure, a single posy where they needed a bouquet.
Bud went down the rickety outside stairs, and sat on the lowest
step, whistling "Wait till the Clouds Roll by, Jenny"; Ross Schofield
descended to set up the quatrain, and Fisbee and Parker were left to
silence and troubled meditation.

They were seated on opposite sides of Harkless's desk. Sheets of blank
scratch-paper lay before them, and they relaxed not their knit brows.
Now and then, one of them, after gazing vacantly about the room for
ten or fifteen minutes, would attack the sheet before him with fiercest
energy; then the energy would taper off, and the paragraph halt, the
writer peruse it dubiously, then angrily tear off the sheet and hurl
it to the floor. All around them lay these snowballs of defeated
journalism.

Mr. Parker was a long, loose, gaunt gentleman, with a peremptory
forehead and a capable jaw, but on the present occasion his capability
was baffled and swamped in the attempt to steer the craft of his talent
up an unaccustomed channel without a pilot. "I don't see as it's any
use, Fisbee," he said, morosely, after a series of efforts that littered
the floor in every direction. "I'm a born compositor, and I can't shift
my trade. I stood the pace fairly for a week, but I'll have to give up;
I'm run plumb dry. I only hope they won't show him our Saturday with
your three columns of 'A Word of the Lotus Motive,' reprinted from
February. I begin to sympathize with the boss, because I know what he
felt when I ballyragged him for copy. Yes, sir, I know how it is to be
an editor in a dead town now."

"We must remember, too," said his companion, thoughtfully, "there is the
Thursday issue of this week to be prepared, almost at once."

"_Don't_! Please don't mention that, Fisbee!" Parker tilted far back in
his chair with his feet anchored under the desk, preserving a precarious
balance. "I ain't as grateful for my promotion to joint Editor-in-Chief
as I might be. I'm a middling poor man for the hour, I guess," he
remarked, painfully following the peregrinations of a fly o