The Old Reporter
hours. Also, his dyspepsia was not so bothersome as when he was travelling.
"I should think," said one of his young friends, on Woods's return from one of these trips, "that you would go in for magazine work now—or write books"
"And sign all four of my names in full?" returned Woods, "and write in the first person and say I did this and I said that? Why? Aren't newspapers and anonymity good enough for you? They are for me. So long as I can make people feel things—that's all I want. Magazines are so slow. It took that one two months to turn around on the Hawaiian stuff I did for them—even then they thought they were beating a rival magazine—Oh, Lord!"
But the young friend meant why didn't Woods write fiction, or try a play, "I think you could do it."
Others in the office thought he could. Woods thought so, too, but he did not see why anyone should want to write fiction, he said, who could handle news; he said that facts were the great romantic material of this unsuperstitious age, and there was just
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