James Fisbee

They were seated on opposite sides of Harkless's desk. Sheets of blank
scratch-paper lay before them, and they relaxed not their knit brows. Now
and then, one of them, after gazing vacantly about the room for ten or
fifteen minutes, would attack the sheet before him with fiercest energy;
then the energy would taper off, and the paragraph halt, the writer peruse
it dubiously, then angrily tear off the sheet and hurl it to the floor.
All around them lay these snowballs of defeated journalism.

Mr. Parker was a long, loose, gaunt gentleman, with a peremptory forehead
and a capable jaw, but on the present occasion his capability was baffled
and swamped in the attempt to steer the craft of his talent up an
unaccustomed channel without a pilot. "I don't see as it's any use,
Fisbee," he said, morosely, after a series of efforts that littered the
floor in every direction. "I'm a born compositor, and I can't shift my
trade. I stood the pace fairly for a week, but I'll have to give up; I'm
run plumb dry. I only hope they won't show him our Saturday with your
three columns of 'A Word of the Lotus Motive,' reprinted from February.
I begin to sympathize with the boss, because I know what he felt when I
ballyragged him for copy. Yes, sir, I know how it is to be an editor in a
dead town now."