The Old Reporter
had two or three unfinished novels in an old trunk, and it was on these that some of his friends had been urging him, not altogether disinterestedly, to get to work, in stead of loafing around, waiting for things to turn up. Billy used to say, "I don't feel like it to-day. Oh, they're no good, anyway."
When he had finally persuaded himself to write something, it seemed so poor and impossible as he looked up at the thing far above him at which he aimed and strained. He did not realize that it is not given to mere man to touch the thing he sighed for. He stared and stared, and then read and re-read what he had created until he loathed it. To run away from it was a necessity.
… Finally, when they said they could lend him no more money, they prevailed upon him to write and finish something. It was something quite different.
Did you ever hear who wrote those greasy little publications you have seen A. D. T. boys bending over in elevated trains—"Crack! and a rifle shot broke the Sabbath stillness of the air, and seven bronzed
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