The Old Reporter
"The Press" for pricking shams and presenting "The Truth," and he prayed that he might be able to present it sincerely and dispassionate and to "always get both sides of the story," as they told him he must," and not to give a damn for what he thought or felt about it."
That is a trivial story perhaps, but in the light of what is to be told later it seems worth while—just as the men in the office often related it (especially before Billy), because it seemed so odd to think of the keen Billy Woods who acquired such abnormal vision in seeing "fakes" in everybody and everything, the versatile Billy Woods, who tracked down Simpson the poisoner when all the detectives failed, and meanwhile continued, for a certain editorial page, his series of daily poems about children, which most of you must have read, though neither you nor many others knew who wrote them—the wonderful Billy Woods who "could do both Wall Street and politics"—and equally well—the adaptable, the convenient, the cynical Billy Woods, who held one kind of
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