"A  poor  failure,"  I  thought,  "some  one  who  can't  write
and  who  now  whines  and  wastes  his  substance  in  riotous
living  when  he  has  it!"

So  much  for  the  sympathy  of  the  poor  for  the  poor.
But  the  Herald  was  doing  very  well.  Daily  it  was  fiUing
its  pages  with  the  splendid  results  of  its  charity,  the  poor  re-
lieved, the  darkling  homes  restored  to  gayety  and  bliss.  .  ..
Can  you  beat  it  ?  But  it  was  good  advertising,  and  that  was
all  the  Herald  wanted.
Hey,  Bub-a-dub !    Hey,  Rub-a-dub-dub !


CHAPTER  II

On  Christmas  Eve  there  came  to  our  home  to  spend  the
next  two  days,  which  chanced  to  be  Saturday  and  Sunday,
Alice  Kane,  a  friend  and  fellow-clerk  of  one  of  my  sisters
in  a  department  store.  Because  the  store  kept  open  until
ten-thirty  or  eleven  that  Christmas  Eve,  and  my  labors  at
the  Herald  office  detained  me  until  the  same  hour,  we  three
arrived  at  the  house  at  nearly  the  same  time.
I  should  say  here  that  the  previous  year,  my  mother  having
died  and  the  home  being  in  dissolution,  I  had  ventured  into
the  world  on  my  own.  Several  sisters,  two  brothers  and  my
father  were  still  together,  but  it  was  a  divided  and  somewhat
colorless  home  at  best.  Our  mother  was  gone.  I  was  already
wondering,  in  great  sadness,  how  long  it  could  endure,  for  she
had  made  of  it  something  as  sweet  as  dreams.  That  tempera-
ment, that  charity  and  understanding  and  sympathy!  We
who  were  left  were  like  fledglings,  trying  our  wings  but  fearful
of  the  world.  My  practical  experience  was  slight.  I  was  a
creature  of  slow  and  uncertain  response  to  anything  practical,
having  an  eye  single  to  color,  romance,  beauty.  I  was  but  a
half-baked  poet,  romancer,  dreamer.
