The Old Reporter
V
For several months after he "left The Day" Billy Woods did not take a regular job on any staff, though plenty of city editors tried to get him. Along the Row Billy's reason for this was smilingly said to be fear that he would forget and absent-mindedly walk into The Day office from force of habit, as he had done once before with another paper's beat, after The Day had tried to discharge him. There are many tales about Billy Woods along the Row. The real reason was a sentimental one, as his old friends knew, a boyish, grand-stand, "true to my first love" sort of loyalty, and Billy was rather pleased with himself for it.
Many of those who left The Day, as soon as they had discovered from the perspective point of view that there were also other ways of regarding facts and writing about them than The Day's way, learned straightway to criticise their former paper, pointing out its complacent cock-sureness and
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