London Times, or Sir Campbell Clarke, of the Daily Telegraph, his efforts might be worth while," said one, moodily sipping absinthe, in Paris fashion, "but what are we but business office puppets, although the strings on us are long ones? We can seldom write our own opinions. Our offices are mainly places of registry for snobbish society people, who want to have their names cabled over to America, so that their neighbors can see them in print; and a story of scandal in high life is always worth more than anything elseunless the story is about the friends of our owners."

"We haven't had anything of importance that we could handle as we wanted to since the Dreyfus case," said another, "and the ones who did the best work on that got no credit from the public."

"I wonder," remarked a third correspondent, musingly, "if the New York Herald people have ever found out where the proof of the biggest day's proceedings in that case went to? It was a great story, and it was stolen out of the office of the Figaro by a New York Journal man-and the consequence was, the Journal scooped the Herald on its own story."

Just then a chic Parisian girl, pretty, and resplendent as a silver pheasant, passed by, and all turned to look at her, except the absinthe drinker.

"The exposition days of 1900 were pretty lively," continued the last speaker. "It was then that we cooked up stories about the doings of wellknown Americans, and fed the cable with 'em on days when there wasn't much doing. I remember

that Ferdinand Peck, American Commissioner, had a son-in-law who was meat for us. The young fellow liked to see his name printed along with the statement of who his father-in-law was. So we imagined a duel for him with a French count of noble lineage-debonair, high-souled, with large estates, and so on-the kind you read about in fiction, but never see in France. The duel had all sorts of fantastic features, and made good reading in America, and the son-in-law stood for it all."

"Did you ever hear how Sam Williams, who was one of the best correspondents that ever represented an American paper in Europe, tried to get next to the Czar of Russia?" said another. "He had a beautiful scheme, and it was no fault of his that it didn't work. The Czar attended the French army maneuvers at Compiègne, in 1901. Williams had heard that he was fond of automobile riding, and that it was planned to have him and President Loubet view things from the machine of a certain rich captain. Through an influential friend, Williams fixed it up to act as chauffeur of that auto. Disguised in a chauffeur's uniform, and wearing big goggles, he got into the machine, and came tearing on to the field in it, prepared to scoop the universe. There were a hundred and seventy-five thousand troops to be reviewed, and the maneuvers would last all the afternoon. During that time the two rulers would doubtless exchange confidences of world-wide importance.

"But the Czar never rode in that auto. At the last minute it was rumored that anarchists were

going to get busy that day, and it was thought best for the autocrat of all the Russias to do his reviewing on horseback. In that way he could keep moving all the time, and thus had a better chance of being missed by any anarchistic lead pellets that might have started his way.

"A year before that, though, Williams pulled. off a good beat. He got an exclusive interview with the Kaiser. The Kaiser was aboard his yacht, in the Thames, having just arrived, to show his friendliness to Great Britain while the Boer war was on a friendliness that was mostly show, by the way. Anyhow, Williams framed up an artistic scheme. He knew he couldn't get on the yacht, so he wrote a number of queries about affairs of the day, mostly concerning commercial relations between America and Germany, I think. He enclosed these in a cable envelope, and sent it by messenger to the imperial yacht. The attendants thought it must be a cablegram, and they had it put into the Kaiser's hands at once. When he read it the Kaiser laughed, and, calling one of his officers, dictated replies to the questions. Then the officer went to the side of the yacht, trained a megaphone on the tug Williams had chartered, and shouted the replies. You never can tell when a scheme like that will succeed, and this happened to be one of the times."