249

A THANKSGIVING STORY

(Copyrighted 1904 Dally Story Publishing

Dick Halliday and [?] criteria for the Port was a visitor for natural extra They used to say of him that he cared less about how en actor deported himself on the stage than the manner in which he quitted it. It had read his stuff--we offices-with admiration and envy. I had aspiration in the way of dramatic criticism myself, and felt I would sacrifice almost anything if by doing so I could enjoy such opportunities as Halliday's. Imagine, then, with what a confusion of feelings I learned from the managing editor of the piper that Dick Halliday had himself made an Unexpected and involuntary Exit-as natural as life or death- and that I was invited to take his position.

Under the circumstances I thought it only decent to restrain my eagerness. I waited an interminable half day, you put on a suit of black and presented myself at the Post. I was installed in the office of the dead man I hung my coat upon his nail. I patin his chair before his desk. I pick up his pen and dipped it in his inkstand. Then I started at it and wondered if it would ever drove as trenchant, as discriminating as devoted to the ideals of art as it had been in hand which were now insert. I had not know Halliday personally, but I has admired him and sympathized with him for years. I had a right to feel regret at the quenching of his mind-or, at least. the destruction of the body which served as a medium for that reckless spirit, that peculiar imagination! I leaned back in Lick Halliday's chair, musing so, and stared at DicK Halliday's desk.

It was the desk of an orderly man. There were labels on the pigeonholes to a the effect that 'live matter' could be found here and "advance matter" there, "biography" in one place and "obituary" in another. I found a cataiogue of photographs and the photographs in a cabinet. Then I openrd the drawers of the desk. Here was a quantity of stationery some smoking tobacco, a meerschaum pipe, somewhat burned in the coloring, a clean collar and two folded handkerchiefs, half a dozen packages of letters and a memorandum book. The personal articles I took at the maraging editor.

Not finished yet!