He went to bed at one, and dreamed of shattered locomotives, human
beings lying still with blankets over them, rows of cells, and banks
of beautiful flowers nodding their heads to the tunes of the brass
band in the gallery. He decided when he awoke the next morning that he
had entered upon a picturesque and exciting career, and as one day
followed another, he became more and more convinced of it, and more
and more devoted to it. He was twenty then, and he was now
twenty-three, and in that time had become a great reporter, and had
been to Presidential conventions in Chicago, revolutions in Hayti,
Indian outbreaks on the Plains, and midnight meetings of moonlighters
in Tennessee, and had seen what work earthquakes, floods, fire, and
fever could do in great cities, and had contradicted the President,
and borrowed matches from burglars. And now he thought he would like
to rest and breathe a bit, and not to work again unless as a war
correspondent. The only obstacle to his becoming a great war
correspondent lay in the fact that there was no war, and a war
correspondent without a war is about as absurd an individual as a
general without an army. He read the papers every morning on the
elevated trains for war clouds; but though there were many war clouds,
they always drifted apart, and peace smiled again. This was very
disappointing to young Gordon, and he became more and more keenly
discouraged.
And then as war work was out of the question, he decided to write his
novel.
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