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"Wicked!" she exclaimed, "To shut yourself up like this! I said it was

fine to drop out of the world; but why have you cut off your old friends

from you? Why haven't you had a relapse, now and then, and co, or to see Mansfield or Henry Irving, when

we have had theht had you to assuotten you?"

"Oh, I didn't exactly rass

to and fro between his fingers, staring at it absently "It's only that I

have dropped out of the world, you know I kept track of every one, saw

most of my friends, or corresponded, now and then, for a year or so after

I left college; but people don't miss you much after a while They rather

expected s, in a way, you know, and I wasn't doing

theet away I always had an itch for newspaper work, and

I went on a New York paper Maybe it was the wrong paper; at least, I

wasn't fit for it There was so in the side of life I saw, too, not

only on the paper, that ht

and scramble to be first, to beat the other man Probably I a into it, bound to

come out ahead, dear old, honest, frank felloho had been so happy-go-