I was to bring down upon the head of this unfortunate friend, I left word at the office that Mr. Van Hamm was to call me at this school at 8 o'clock that evening.
My wife and I then proceeded to pack our belongings for the steamer—the first opportunity we had had in all this excitement. The superintendent of the apartment-house came to us to ask if we could leave an hour earlier than we had intended, as there were two gentlemen who had rented it and wanted to move in immediately. My wife said: "Surely no one can move into an apartment in the state of disorder in which we are leaving this!"
"It seems strange," was the reply, "but that is what they want to do. They do not want to wait to have it put in order. They are waiting, and they want to come in the minute you leave."
If I had been dealing with Hearst newspapers for a sufficiently long time, I would have understood in advance the significance of this phenomenon. As it was, I simply pitied the two unfortunate young men, who would have to spend the night in the midst of the chaotic mass of torn manuscripts and scraps of letters and envelopes which littered the floor. Later on I was glad that I had married a lawyer's daughter—when my wife informed me she had gone over this trash and burned every scrap of paper relating to Miss Branch and her affairs!
I went to the reception, and at about 8 o'clock in the evening the "Journal" called me up—"Mr. Williams" on the wire—to say that Mr. Van Hamm had considered my article and regretted to say that he could not use it. The information that I had offered him was not considered worth the sum of three hundred dollars. I asked what it was worth, and was told twenty-five dollars. I said, "That won't do. I will offer it somewhere else." I demanded the right to speak to Mr. Van Hamm himself on the subject, but was told that he was "out." I was obliged to content myself with impressing upon "Mr. Williams" the fact that not a syllable that I had confided to Mr. Van Hamm was to be used by the "Journal." "Mr. Williams" solemnly assured me that my demand would be complied with—and this in face of the fact that the last edition of the "Evening Journal," containing the whole story, was then in the "Journal" wagons, being distributed over the city! I called up a friend of mine on the "World" to offer him the
