My strength had at last given
out.
So began my life as a newspaper man.
CHAPTER VI
IN WHICH I BECOME AN EDITOR AND RECEIVE MY FIRST LOVE LETTER
I had my hands full that winter. The profession I had entered by
so thorny a path did not prove to be a bed of roses. But I was not
looking for roses. I doubt if I would have known what to do with
them had there been any. Hard work and hard knocks had been my
portion heretofore, and I was fairly trained down to that. Besides,
now that the question where the next meal was to come from did not
loom up whichever way I looked, the thing for me was to be at work
hard enough and long enough to keep from thinking. With every letter
from home I expected to hear that she was married, and then--I
never got any farther. A furious kind of energy took possession of
me at the mere idea, and I threw myself upon my work in a way that
speedily earned for me the name of a good reporter. "Good" had
reference to the quantity of work done rather than to the quality
of it. That was of less account than our ability to "get around"
to our assignments; necessarily so, for we mostly had six or seven
of an evening to attend, our route extending often from Harlem clear
down to the Bowery.
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