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Riis, Jacob A., 1849-1914

"The Making of an American"

So that they were nearly "on a line," we were
supposed to have no cause of complaint. Our office sold news to
morning and evening papers both, and our working day, which began
at 10 A.M., was seldom over until one or two o'clock the next
morning. Three reporters had to attend to all the general news of
the city that did not come through the regular department channels.
A queerly assorted trio we were: "Doc" Lynch, who had graduated from
the medical school to Bohemia, following a natural bent, I suppose;
Crafts, a Maine boy of angular frame and prodigious self-confidence;
and myself. Lynch I have lost sight of long ago. Crafts, I am told,
is rich and prosperous, the owner of a Western newspaper. That
was bound to happen to him. I remember him in the darkest days of
that winter, when to small pay, hard work, and long hours had been
added an attack of measles that kept him in bed in his desolate
boarding-house, far from kindred and friends. "Doc" and I had run
in on a stolen visit to fill their place as well as we might. We
sat around trying to look as cheerful as we could and succeeding
very poorly; but Crafts's belief in himself and his star soared above
any trivialities of present discouragement.


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