midnight
To each of those young men , beginning the strangely fascinating life as reporters and correspondents , his paper was as dear as his king once was to a French noble ; to serve it night and day , to wear himself out for its sake , to merge himself in its glory , and to live in its triumphs without personal recognition from the public , was the loyal devotion which each expected his sovereign newspaper to accept as its simple right . They went and came , with the prompt and passive obedience of soldiers , wherever they were sent , and they struggled each to `` get in ahead '' of all the others with the individual zeal of heroes . They expanded to the utmost limits of occasion , and they submitted with an anguish that was silent to the editorial excision , compression , and mutilation of reports that were vitally dear to them . What becomes of these ardent young spirits , the inner history of journalism in any great city might pathetically show ; but the outside world knows them only in the fine frenzy of interviewing , or of recording the midnight ravages of what they call the devouring element , or of working up horrible murders or tragical accidents , or of tracking criminals who have baffled all the detectives . Hearing their talk Bartley began to realize that journalism might be a very different thing from what he had imagined it in a country printing-office , and that it might not be altogether wise to consider it merely as a stepping-stone to the law . With the American eagerness to recognize talent , numbers of good fellows spoke to him about his logging sketch ; even those who had not read it seemed to know about it as a hit . They were all delighted to be able to say , `` Ricker tells me that you offered it to old Witherby , and he would n't look at it ! ''