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Rh with us, for a few minutes later he had given me a card to Laffan, manager of the New York Sun. "Go and see him the day after to-morrow," he said. "Meanwhile I'll write him a line about you."

Had it been possible to go then and there I should have felt more confidence and less nervousness than when I called at the appointed hour. The interval, with its hopeful anticipation and alternate dread, was a bad preparation for appearing at my best. After a few questions, however, Mr. Laffan, a man of very powerful position in the newspaper world, a great art collector and connoisseur, head, too, of the Laffan News Bureau, said that Mr. McCloy, managing editor of the Evening Sun, would give me a trial as a reporter, and I could start next Monday—four days away—at fifteen dollars a week. I had mentioned that I knew French and German, and could write shorthand. He spoke to me in both languages, but, luckily, he did not think of testing the speed and accuracy of my self-taught Pitman.

On the staff of a great New York newspaper! That it was anti-British and pro-Tammany did not bother me. A reporter! A starting salary of £3 a week that might grow! I wrote the news to my father that very afternoon, and that night Kay, Boyde and I had almost a festive dinner at Krisch's restaurant—that is, we ended with sweets and coffee. The following day I spent practising my rusty shorthand, about 90 words a minute being my best speed consistent with legibility. Would it be fast enough? I might have spared myself the trouble for all the use shorthand was to me on the Evening Sun during the two years I remained with it. Only once—much later, when I was with the New York Times, did it prove of value, securing for me on that occasion an increase of salary The slogan of the Sun, printed on each copy was, "If you See it in the Sun it is so!" accuracy the strong point. The Times preferred a moral tinge: "All the News that's Fit to Print." Both mottoes were faithfully observed and rigidly practised.

Rh