But this is not exactly the sort of thing one finds it easy to confide to a policeman, be he ever so friendly a policeman.
Cleggett--Old Clegg, the copyreader--Clegg, the commonplace--C.

J.
Cleggett, the Brooklynite-this person whom young reporters conceived of as the staid, dry prophet of the dusty Fact--was secretly a mighty reservoir of unwritten, unacted, unlived, unspoken romance.

He ate it, he drank it, he breathed it, he dreamed it.

The usual copyreader, when he closes his eyes and smiles upon a pleasant inward vision, is thinking of starting a chicken-farm in New Jersey.

But Cleggett--with gray sprinkled in his hair, sober of face and precise of manner, as the world knew him--lived a hidden life which was one long, wild adventure.
Nobody had ever suspected it.