It was about this time that I began to establish cordial relations with the short, broad-shouldered, sad-faced reporter whom I have mentioned. At first he appeared to be a little shy of me, but as time passed and I seemed to have established myself in the favor of the paper, he became more friendly. He was really a at heart, but did not dare let it be known here. Often of a morning he would spend as much as two hours with me, discussing the nature of coal-mining and steel-making, the difficulty of arranging wage conditions which would satisfy all the men and not cause ; but in the main he commented on the shrewd and cunning way in which the bosses were more and more overreaching their employees, upon their prejudices by religious and political , and at the same time them through the company store, the short ton, the cost of mining materials, rent. At first, knowing nothing about the situation, I was inclined to doubt whether he was as sound in these matters as he seemed to be. Later, as I grew in personal knowledge, I thought he might be too conservative, so painful did many of the things seem which I saw with my own eyes and his aid.  
About this time several things to stir up my feelings in regard to New York. The Pittsburgh papers gave great space to New York events and affairs, much more than did most of the mid-Western papers. There was a millionaire steel colony here which was trying to connect itself with the so-called “Four Hundred” of New York, as well as the royal social atmosphere of England and France; and the comings and goings and doings of these people at Newport, New York, Bar Harbor, London and Paris were chronicled. Occasionally I was sent to one or another of these great homes to ask about the details of certain marriages or proposed trips, and would find the people in the midst of the most preparations. One night, for instance, I was sent to ask a certain steel man about the resumption or extension of work in one of the mills. His house was but a dot on a great estate, the reaching of which was very difficult. I found him about ten o’clock at night stepping into a carriage to be driven to the local station, which was at the foot of the grounds. Although I was going to the same station in order to catch a local back to the city, he did not ask me to accompany him. Instead he paused on the step of his carriage to say that he could not say definitely whether the work would be done or not. He was surrounded by bags, a gun, a fishing basket and other , after which of course a servant was looking. When he was gone I walked along the same road to the same station, and saw him there. Another man came up and greeted him.
 
“Going down to New York, George?” he inquired.
 
“No, to the Chesapeake. My man tells me ducks are there now, and I thought I’d run down and get a few.”
 
The through train, which had been ordered to stop for him, rolled in and he was gone. I waited for my smoky local, marveling at the comfort and ease which had been already by a man of not more than forty-five years of age.
 
But there were other things which seemed always to talk to me of New York, New York. I picked up a new weekly, the Standard, one evening, and found a paper of the most pornographic and character which pretended to report with accuracy all the gayeties of the stage, the clubs, the tenderloins or white-light districts, as well as society of the racier and more spendthrift character. This paper only of pleasure: yacht parties, midnight suppers, dances, scenes behind the stage and of blissful young stars of the theatrical, social and money worlds. Here were ease and luxury! In New York, plainly, was all this, and I might go there and by some fluke of chance taste of it. I studied this paper by the hour, dreaming of all it suggested.
 
And there was Munsey’s, the first and most successful of all the ten-cent magazines then coming into existence and being fed to the public by the ton. I saw it first piled in high stacks before a news and book store in Pittsburgh. The size of the pile of magazines and the price induced a examination, although I had never even heard of it before. Poor as it was intellectually—and it was poor—it contained an entire section of highly-coated paper to actresses, the stage and scenes from plays, and still another carrying pictures of beauties in society in different cities, and still another devoted to successful men in Wall Street. It breathed mostly of New York, its social doings, its art and literary colonies. It fired me with an ambition to see New York.
 
A third paper, Town Topics, was the best of all, a paper most brilliantly edited by a man of exceptional literary skill (C. M. S. McLellan). It related to exclusive society in New York, London and Paris, the houses, palaces, yachts, restaurants and hotels, the goings and comings of the owners; and although it really fun at all this and ot............