“The topic had, however, fallen flat.  With the exception of one man who had invented a new feeding-bottle, and thought he was going to advertise it for nothing, the outside public did not respond, and over the editorial department gloom had settled down.

“One evening, as two or three of us were mooning about the stairs, praying secretly for a war or a famine, Todhunter, the town reporter, rushed past us with a cheer, and burst into the Sub-editor’s room.  We followed.  He was waving his notebook above his head, and clamouring, after the manner of people in French exercises, for pens, ink, and paper.

“‘What’s up?’ cried the Sub-editor, catching his enthusiasm; ’influenza again?’

“‘Better than that!’ shouted Todhunter.  ’Excursion steamer run down, a hundred and twenty-five lives lost—­four good columns of heartrending scenes.’

“‘By Jove!’ said the Sub, ’couldn’t have happened at a better time either’—­and then he sat down and dashed off a leaderette, in which he dwelt upon the pain and regret the paper felt at having to announce the disaster, and drew attention to the exceptionally harrowing account provided by the energy and talent of ‘our special reporter.’”

“It is the law of nature,” said Jephson:  “we are not the first party of young philosophers who have been struck with the fact that one man’s misfortune is another man’s opportunity.”

“Occasionally, another woman’s,” I observed.

I was thinking of an incident told me by a nurse.  If a nurse in fair practice does not know more about human nature—­does not see clearer into the souls of men and women than all the novelists in little Bookland put together—­it must be because she is physically blind and deaf.  All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; so long as we are in good health, we play our parts out bravely to the end, acting them, on the whole, artistically and with strenuousness, even to the extent of sometimes fancying ourselves the people we are pretending to be.  But with sickness comes forgetfulness of our part, and carelessness of the impression we are making upon the audience.  We are too weak to put the paint and powder on our faces, the stage finery lies unheeded by our side.  The heroic gestures, the virtuous sentiments are a weariness to us.  In the quiet, darkened room, where the foot-lights of the great stage no longer glare upon us, where our ears are no longer strained to catch the clapping or the hissing of the town, we are, for a brief space, ourselves.

This nurse was a quiet, demure little woman, with a pair of dreamy, soft gray eyes that had a curious power of absorbing everything that passed before them without seeming to look at anything.  Gazing upon much life, laid bare, had given to them a slightly cynical expression, but there was a background of kindliness behind.