I had, that day, been discharged from the _Tribune_ for cause. The new president of the Southern Pacific Company was on his way to San Francisco, and it was necessary for our paper to get ahead of its contemporaries and obtain the first interview. I was told to meet the magnate at Los Angeles. I loitered at a saloon till I was too late for the train, and then decided I would meet my man down the line at Fresno. The next train south left while I was still drinking. I had time, however, to catch the victim on the other side of the bay, and interview him on the ferry, but he got in before I roused myself from my dalliance with the grape. Then, trusting to sheer bluff, I hurried into the office, called up two stenographers, dictated a fake interview containing important news, and rushed the thing on the press.
The next day the president of the railway repudiated the whole thing, and I was summarily given the sack. Nevertheless, it so happened that almost the whole of what I had predicted came true within the year.
I celebrated the bad luck in my characteristic manner, and finished with just sense enough to wish to clear my head with black coffee. So, trusting to my slight acquaintance with Coffee John, and more to his well-known generosity, I entered his place, and for the first time in my life requested what I could not pay for. I was not disappointed. A cup of coffee and a plate of doughnuts were handed me without comment or advice.
As I was making my meal in the back part of the little restaurant, three men, one after the other, came and sat down at my table. In the general conversation that ensued I found that one was a tramp printer, whose boast it was to have worked and jumped his board-bill in nearly every State in the Union; one was a book-agent, who had been attempting to dispose of “The Life of U. S. Grant,” and the third was an insurance solicitor, who had failed to make good the trade’s reputation for acumen.
A little talk developed the fact that all four of us were out of funds, and ready for anything that promised to keep the wolf from the door. Then, with a journalist’s instinct for putting three and one together, an idea came to me by which we could all find a way out of the dilemma.