"It's the little things that count, after all," said I.
"It's your little bed that counts with you just now," said the doctor.

"You come with me at once, or I'll throw up the case. 'You're as
loony as a loon."

So I got no cocoanut-pudding that evening, but I conceived a distrust
as to the value of the method of the head-hunters. Perhaps for many

centuries the maidens of the villages may have been looking wistfully
at the heads in the baskets at the doorways, longing for other and

lesser trophies.
NO STORY

To avoid having this book hurled into corner of the room by the
suspicious reader, I will assert in time that this is not a newspaper

story. You will encounter no shirt-sleeved, omniscient city editor,
no prodigy "cub" reporter just off the farm, no scoop, no story--no

anything.
But if you will concede me the setting of the first scene in the

reporters' room of the Morning Beacon, I will repay the favor by
keeping strictly my promises set forth above.

I was doing space-work on the Beacon, hoping to be put on a salary.
Some one had cleared with a rake or a shovel a small space for me at

the end of a long table piled high with exchanges, Congressional
Records, and old files. There I did my work. I wrote whatever the

city whispered or roared or chuckled to me on my diligent wanderings
about its streets. My income was not regular.

One day Tripp came in and leaned on my table. Tripp was something in
the mechanical department--I think he had something to do with the

pictures, for he smelled of photographers' supplies, and his hands
were always stained and cut up with acids. He was about twenty-five

and looked forty. Half of his face was covered with short, curly red
whiskers that looked like a door-mat with the "welcome" left off. He

was pale and unhealthy and miserable and fawning, and an assiduous
borrower of sums ranging from twenty-five cents to a dollar. One

dollar was his limit. He knew the extent of his credit as well as the
Chemical National Bank knows the amount of H20 that collateral will

show on analysis. When he sat on my table he held one hand with the
other to keep both from shaking. Whiskey. He had a spurious air of

lightness and bravado about him that deceived no one, but was useful
in his borrowing because it was so pitifully and perceptibly assumed.

This day I had coaxed from the cashier five shining silver dollars as
a grumbling advance on a story that the Sunday editor had reluctantly

accepted. So if I was not feeling at peace with the world, at least
an armistice had been declared; and I was beginning with ardor to

write a description of the Brooklyn Bridge by moonlight.
"Well, Tripp," said I, looking up at him rather impatiently, "how goes

it?" He was looking to-day more miserable, more cringing and haggard
and downtrodden than I had ever seen him. He was at that stage of

misery where he drew your pity so fully that you longed to kick him.
"Have you got a dollar?" asked Tripp, with his most fawning look and

his dog-like eyes that blinked in the narrow space between his high-
growing matted beard and his low-growing matted hair.

"I have," said I; and again I said, "I have," more loudly and
inhospitably, "and four besides. And I had hard work corkscrewing

them out of old Atkinson, I can tell you. And I drew them," I
continued, "to meet a want--a hiatus--a demand--a need--an exigency--a

requirement of exactly five dollars."
I was driven to emphasis by the premonition that I was to lose one of

the dollars on the spot.
"I don't want to borrow any," said Tripp, and I breathed again. "I

thought you'd like to get put onto a good story," he went on. "I've
got a rattling fine one for you. You ought to make it run a column at

least. It'll make a dandy if you work it up right. It'll probably
cost you a dollar or two to get the stuff. I don't want anything out

of it myself."
I became placated. The proposition showed that Tripp appreciated past

favors, although he did not return them. If he had been wise enough
to strike me for a quarter then he would have got it.

"What is the story ?" I asked, poising my pencil with a finely
calculated editorial air.

"I'll tell you," said Tripp. "It's a girl. A beauty. One of the
howlingest Amsden's Junes you ever saw. Rosebuds covered with dew-

violets in their mossy bed--and truck like that. She's lived on Long
Island twenty years and never saw New York City before. I ran against

her on Thirty-fourth Street. She'd just got in on the East River
ferry. I tell you, she's a beauty that would take the hydrogen out of

all the peroxides in the world. She stopped me on the street and
asked me where she could find George Brown. Asked me where she could

find George Brown in New York City! What do you think of that?
"I talked to her, and found that she was going to marry a young farmer

named Dodd--Hiram Dodd--next week. But it seems that George Brown
still holds the championship in her youthful fancy. George had

greased his cowhide boots some years ago, and came to the city to make
his fortune. But he forgot to remember to show up again at Greenburg,

and Hiram got in as second-best choice. But when it comes to the
scratch Ada--her name's Ada Lowery--saddles a nag and rides eight

miles to the railroad station and catches the 6.45 A.M. train for the
city. Looking for George, you know--you understand about women--

George wasn't there, so she wanted him.
"Well, you know, I couldn't leave her loose in Wolftown-on-the-Hudson.

I suppose she thought the first person she inquired of would say:
'George Brown ?--why, yes--lemme see--he's a short man with light-blue

eyes, ain't he? Oh yes--you'll find George on One Hundred and Twenty-
fifth Street, right next to the grocery. He's bill-clerk in a saddle-

and-harness store.' That's about how innocent and beautiful she is.
You know those little Long Island water-front villages like Greenburg-

-a couple of duck-farms for sport, and clams and about nine summer
visitors for industries. That's the kind of a place she comes from.

But, say--you ought to see her!
"What could I do? I don't know what money looks like in the morning.

And she'd paid her last cent of pocket-money for her railroad ticket
except a quarter, which she had squandered on gum-drops. She was

eating them out of a paper bag. I took her to a boarding-house on
Thirty-second Street where I used to live, and hocked her. She's in

soak for a dollar. That's old Mother McGinnis' price per day. I'll
show you the house."

"What words are these, Tripp?" said I. "I thought you said you had a
story. Every ferryboat that crosses the East River brings or takes

away girls from Long Island."
The premature lines on Tripp's face grew deeper. He frowned seriously

from his tangle of hair. He separated his hands and emphasized his
answer with one shaking forefinger.

"Can't you see," he said, "what a rattling fine story it would make?
You could do it fine. All about the romance, you know, and describe

the girl, and put a lot of stuff in it about true love, and sling in a
few stickfuls of funny business--joshing the Long Islanders about

being green, and, well--you know how to do it. You ought to get
fifteen dollars out of it, anyhow. And it'll. cost you only about

four dollars. You'll make a clear profit of eleven."
"How will it cost me four dollars?" I asked, suspiciously.

"One dollar to Mrs. McGinnis," Tripp answered, promptly, "and two
dollars to pay the girl's fare back home."

"And the fourth dimension?" I inquired, making a rapid mental
calculation.

"One dollar to me," said Tripp. "For whiskey. Are you on?"
I smiled enigmatically and spread my elbows as if to begin writing

again. But this grim, abject, specious, subservient, burr-like wreck
of a man would not be shaken off. His forehead suddenly became

shiningly moist.