It runs in streaks, like accidents and fires.
The thing is to get in the way of it and keep there till it comes
along, then hitch on, and away you go. It is the old story of the
early bird. I got up at five o'clock, three hours before any of my
competitors, and sometimes they came down to the office to find my
news hawked about the street in extras of their own papers.
One way or another, a fight there was always on hand. That seemed
foreordained. If it was not "the opposition" it was the police.
When Mulberry Street took a rest the publisher's "reader" began it,
and the proof-reader. This last is an enemy of human kind anyhow.
Not only that he makes you say things you never dreamed of, but
his being so cocksure that he knows better every time, is a direct
challenge to a fight. The "reader" is tarred with the same stick.
He is the one who passes on the manuscript, and he has an ingrown
hatred of opinion. If a man has that, he is his enemy before he
ever sets eye on him. He passed on my manuscript with a blue pencil
that laid waste whole pages, once a whole chapter, with a stroke.
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