"
"That sort of life is much of a muchness."
"How do you hear?"
"One of the _Bulletin_ men--Tom Lacey--went East just after Masters
did. He is on the _Times_. Several of us correspond with him."
"Has--has he ever been--literally, I mean--in the gutter?"
"Probably. He was in a hospital for a time and when he came out
several of his friends tried to buck him up. But it was no use. He did
work on one of the newspapers--the _Tribune_, I believe--about half
sober until he had paid his hospital bill with something to spare.
Then he went to work in the same old steady painstaking way to drink
himself to death."
"Wh--why did he go to the hospital? Was he very ill?"
"Busted the crust of a policeman and got his own busted at the same
time."
"How is it you spared me this before?"
He pretended not to see her tears, or her working hands.
"Didn't want to give you too heavy doses at once, but you are so
much stronger that I chanced it. He's been in more than one
spectacular affair. One night, in front of the City Prison, he tossed
the driver off a van as if the man had been a dead leaf, and before
the guard had time to jump to his seat he was on the box and had
lashed the horses. He drove like mad all over New York for hours, the
prisoners inside yelling and cursing at the top of their lungs.
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