Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/247

This page needs to be proofread.

The Old Reporter

went up after the address to get the type-written selections of it which had carefully been manifolded for the licentious press by the young professor who thought he was a celebrity getting interviewed and tried to appear accustomed to it. But young Woods, red in the face, and indignant with everybody, wanted to tell them all that he was a newspaper man and glad, proud of it, hated them all for insulting his high and noble "calling" and strode out of the room with chin high. "Who is this man—what's his family, I'd like to know?" he exclaimed to his Southern self—though that would not seem to have much to do with it.

At the office he told the night city editor all about it with eloquence, while the nearby copy editor's shoulders shook.

It was the office's first introduction to the boy's full-grown vocabulary. The night city editor, Stone, listened to most of it, and then said, kindly, "I see. Write it."

Write it! The young Southerner "declared" he would not lose his self-respect. "You just ought to have heard him. He insulted all of us."

227