y soon,
Witla."

"Do you think so?" questioned Eugene.

"It's pretty good. There ought to be a place on one of the newspapers
here for a man like you--an afternoon newspaper possibly. Did you ever
try to get on?"

"I did when I first came to the city, but they didn't want anyone. I'm
rather glad they didn't now. I guess they wouldn't have kept me very
long."

"You draw in pen and ink pretty well, don't you?"

"I thought I liked that best of all at first."

"Well, then, they ought to be able to use you. I wouldn't stay very long
at it though. You ought to go to New York to get in the magazine
illustration field--there's nothing out here. But a little newspaper
work now wouldn't hurt you."

Eugene decided to try the afternoon papers, for he knew that if he got
work on one of these he could still continue his night classes. He could
give the long evening session to the illustration class and take an
occasional night off to work on the life studies. That would make an
admirable arrangement. For several days he took an hour after his work
to make inquiry, taking with him some examples of his pen and inks.
Several of the men he saw liked what he had to show, but he found no
immediate opening. There was only one paper, one of the poorest, that
offered him any encouragement. The editor-in-chief said he might be in
need of a man shortly. If Eugene would come in again in three or four
weeks he could tell him. They did not pay very much--twenty-five dollars
to beginners.

Eugene thought of this as a great opportunity, and when he went back in
three weeks and actually secured the place, he felt that he was now
fairly on the road to prosperity. He was given a desk in a small back
room on a fourth floor where there was accidentally west and north
light. He was in a department which held two other men, both several
years older than himself, one of whom posed as "dean" of the staff.

The work here was peculiar in that it included not only pen and ink but
the chalk plate process which was a method of drawing with a steel point
upon a zinc plate covered with a deposit of chalk, which left a design
which was easily reproduced. Eugene had never done this, he had to be
shown by the "dean," but he soon picked it up. He found it hard on his
lungs, for he had constantly to keep blowing the chalk away as he
scratched the surface of the plate, and sometimes the dust went up into
his nostrils. He hoped sincerely there would not be muc