“You didn’t come alone, did you?”

She glanced at him quickly and answered:  “I came alone, but I live with my aunt.”

She returned to her work, and she must have discovered that he was watching her, for the next day he saw that she had moved her desk.

Henry had applied for membership in the Press Club, and one morning a reporter told him that he had been elected.

“Was there any opposition?” the editor asked.

“Not after the boys learned that you had been a reporter.  You can go over at any time and sign the constitution.”

“I’ll go now.  Suppose you come with me.”

The Press Club of Chicago is a democracy.  Money holds but little influence within its precincts, for its ablest members are generally “broke.”  There are no rules hung on its walls, no cool ceremonies to be observed.  Its atmosphere invites a man to be natural, and warns him to conceal his vanities.  Among that body of men no pretense is sacred.  Here men of Puritan ancestry find it well to curb a puritanical instinct.  A stranger may be shocked by a snort of profanity, but if he listens he will hear a bright and poetic blending of words rippling after it.  A great preacher, whose sermons are read by the world, sat one day in the club, uttering the slow and heavy sentences of an oracle.  He touched his finger tips together.  He was discoursing on some phase of life; and an old night police reporter listened for a moment and said, “Rats!” The great man was startled.  Accustomed to deliver his theories to a silent congregation, he was astonished to find that his wisdom could so irreverently be questioned.  The reporter meant no disrespect, but he could not restrain his contempt for so presuming a piece of ignorance.  He turned to the preacher and showed him where his theories were wrong.  With a pin he touched the bubble of the great man’s presumption, and it was done kindly, for when the sage arose to go he said:  “I must confess that I have learned something.  I fear that a preacher’s library does not contain all that is worth knowing.”  And this, more than any of his sermons, proved his wisdom.

In the Press Club the pulse of the town can be felt, and scandals that money and social influence have suppressed are known there.  The characters of public men are correctly estimated; snobs are laughed at; and the society woman who seeks to bribe the press with she cajolery of a smile is a familiar joke.  Of course this is not wholly a harmonious body, for keen intelligence is never in smooth accord with itself.  To the “kicker” is given the right to “kick,” and keen is the enjoyment of this privilege.  Every directory is the worst; every officer neglects his duty.

Literary societies know but little of this club, for literary societies despise the affairs of the real worker—­they are interested in the bladdery essay written by the fashionable ass.