The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1890-11-21

know all about it. Hain't been overto
North ~Bridgewater?" | know this IS
true, for my grandmother told me OF it.
and she had no talent for fiction.
P. Winthrop Bowers went to New
York with some Cape Cod ideas, though
perhaps none of them was quite as pro-
nounced as the old lady's. Peter they
called him at home, but he was deter
mined to be a city man. That was the
reason he got into trouble. And of all
the men on the staff Bowers had the
greatest faculty for getting into the most
kinds of trouble at once. None of us
knew why the city editor took him on,
and the longer he stayed with us the less
we understood it. To be sure he had a
hearty, good natured way with him that
captivated everybody who knew him. We
got to calling him Cocktail Bowers after
the first week because his laugh was IL
fictitious, and Billings declared that It
was better than a cocktail to meet him
in the morning.
The city editor was very shy Of COCK
tails. His predecessor wa enjoying a
years vacation. without pay, in eonse-
quence of certain inabstirences that had
come to the notice of the chief, and he
had been chosen, we all thought, on ac-
count of his rigid virtue rather than be-
cause of any other fitness. That might
have been one reason why he took Bow
ers on. Anybody could see in a minute
that Bowers had never been on a jam
boree in his life.
He lost no time. In somewhat less
than a week he showed up an hour late
at the office, q gorgeous picture of tenn
porary ruin. The pallor of his face was
such that chalk would have made a
dark mark down his cheek, and his eyes
looked like two red, rising moons, with
dark clouds around them. Some of the
youngsters laughed, and the older men
wondered whether he would catch the
reaction soon. Bowers laughed
The reaction didn't ome Sometimes
it happens SO, though from watching
the habits of successive generations of
youngsters we rather expected it, when
the man was really a man at the bottom
1t doesn't take very many years to be-
come a veteran in reporting, and 1t a
man gets beyond his third or fourth year
he is likely to turn out we'll enough, ac-
cording to his nature. After five or SIX
he will either have settled into an ire
deemable, or have gotten a start up
ward, or have left the business. Always
excepting the men who are born report
ers. They stay where they are.
These-the ve-terans-learn to meas
ure the youngsters pretty accurately, as
a rule, and, Us | said, haven't long to
wait to learn how their prophecies win
pan out. Bowers puzzled us, though.
Bowers, you're making the pace too
hot for the first quarter" said the sport
ing editor to him very kindly day.
you'll be out of the race in the first
half mile if you don't pull" But OF
course, though it was meant well, that
did Bowers no good. He was waiting
for his lesson. as boys do. 1t came-it
always does; and because l happened to
be mixed up in it at two ends is why
am writing this story.
Long before the story developed itself
| had become interested in young Bow
ers-largely from curiosity, for philan-
thropic efforts grow perfunctory IN the
abnormal conditions Of a newspaper Of
fee, and even your desk neighbor be-
comes a mere unit in the multitude
which is too numerous to be readily af-
fected by individual effort Of
all this is only a stage of development,
but it is the last stage that a good many
men reach.