THE FREE LANCE.
Published Monthly during the College Year by the Students of
Vol. XI
Prom out the lofty spires, far and near,
Ring loud the bells with solemn funeral knell
And echoes wild reverberate "Farewell I"
At parting with the old, dead, misspent year,
ALITTLE over five years ago, as a student of State College,
I was counting the days until I was to be released from
what I deemed the drudgery of college life and was to
begin the career which I then called " journalism." To-night,
as an humble "newspaper man," whose daily life seems a jumble
of murder cases, suicides, lawsuits, railroad disasters, wars, and
rumors of wars, I take it upon myself to set forth a few facts
which I trust may be of some use to those men of my Alma Mater
who contemplate wielding their pens as a means of livelihood.
Few vocations, if any, are likely to prove such a constant strain
upon a man's mental and physical resources as that of work on a
great daily. The man who is about to fill one of the humbler
places on a metropolitan paper must be prepared to rise early and
to retire late, and often not to retire at all; to face the elements
in their bitterest moods; to fraternize with the rag-tag and bob
tail of humanity; to endure affronts with a smiling face, and at
times to make himself obnoxious. It is a hard school but a good
one. Many enter it and few get their diplomas. But any man
The Pennsylvania Slate College
JANUARY, 1898.
THE PASSING OP THE YEAR
A ot ~,I
THE NEWSPAPER MAN
No. 7