"
"What's that?" asked Kittredge, "that it's a good profession to get out
of?"
"No. But that bad habits will not help a man to a career in journalism any
more than in any other profession."
"Career?" smiled Kittredge, resenting Howard's good-humoured irony and
putting on a supercilious look that brought out more strongly the
insignificance of his face. "Journalism is not a career. It is either a
school or a cemetery. A man may use it as a stepping-stone to something
else. But if he sticks to it, he finds himself an old man, dead and done
for to all intents and purposes years before he's buried."
"I wonder if it doesn't attract a great many men who have a little talent
and fancy that they have much. I wonder if it does not disappoint their
vanity rather than their merit."
"That sounds well," replied Kittredge, "and there's some truth in it. But,
believe me, journalism is the dragon that demands the annual sacrifice of
youth. It will have only youth. Why am I here? Why are you here? Because we
are young, have a fresh, a new point of view. As soon as we get a little
older, we shall be stale and, though still young in years, we must step
aside for young fellows with new ideas and a new point of view."
"But why should not one have always new ideas, always a new point of view?
Why should one expect to escape the penalties of stagnation in journalism
when one can't escape them in any other profession?"
"But who has new ideas all the time? The average successful man has at most
one idea and makes a whole career out of it.
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