who has spent two or three years as a reporter has had an experi
ence that will prove invaluable in any walk of life. He has seen
human nature and has come to understand it as only can the
newspaper man who daily rubs against the great and the small.
From the senior class in college to the kindergarten of a news
paper is a dreadful fall. It is a fall likely to mangle his self
esteem. The young man who has written grave treatises on ethics
is apt to look lightly on a simple case of suicide as a subject for a
composition. But the mad rush from the office to the scene of the
incident, the hurried interviews with the policemen, the physi
cians, the friends of the deceased, the construction of an account
of the event in a noisy room, with office boys carrying away the
pages as fast as they are filled—all this tries the brain and the pen
far more than a quiet corner of the college library and carefully
indexed volumes of information. When the college thesis has
been completed it is generally forgotten. After the suicide story
has been finished and printed it may be found that the fact that
the deceased was a third cousin of the celebrated so-and-so has
been omitted. Then the unfortunate beginner comes in contact
with that despot, the city editor. The story may have been a
gem as to English, but the paper has been beaten, and in the face
of this awful fact all else is forgotten. It does not take the city
editor long to convince the new reporter that he is about the
stupidest being in the universe.
The city editor is a small despot. He has troubles of his own,
and is not inclined to sympathize with others in theirs. It is his
business to find out what there is in the new man; whether he
can write English; if he has a " nose for news," assurance, perse
verance and pluck; and in finding this out he makes the " cub's "
life one of misery.
May I be pardoned for recalling a personal experience illus
trative of one of the hardest trials through which the new man
must pass? It was my first day. The city editor found the notice
of the marriage of a man whose name was similar to that of a
person who some ten years before had been released from prison
after serving a term for a celebrated crime. I was informed that
if I could connect the groom with the criminal there would be a
good story in it, and with my pulse at a hundred and two I started
forth to my task. A whole afternoon was spent in vain beating
about the bush. Evening found me standing before the brown-
The Free Lance
[ JANUARY,