No item about a firm failing, a family starving, or a man dying upon the streets, supposedly of starvation, but arrested his eye as he scanned the morning papers.
Once the "World" came out with a flaring announcement about "80,000 people out of employment in New York this winter," which struck as a knife at his heart.
"Eighty thousand!" he thought.

"What an awful thing that is." This was new reasoning for Hurstwood.

In the old days the world had seemed to be getting along well enough.

He had been wont to see similar things in the "Daily News," in Chicago, but they did not hold his attention.

Now, these things were like gray clouds hovering along the horizon of a clear day.