Page:Episodes-before-thirty.djvu/108

Rh my lightning sketch, the machine-gun crackled with its deadliest aim again: "Only one thing counts here; get the news and get it quick; method of no consequence. Get the news and get it first!" He darted off, for the first edition went to press at 10.30. As he went, however, he turned his head a moment. "Write a story," he back-fired at me. "Write your experiences--From Methodism to Running a Saloon,"--and he vanished amid the whirling machinery in the back of the great room.

I have the pleasantest recollections of W. C. McCloy; he was just, fair, sympathetic, too, when time permitted; he showed me many little kindnesses; he was Presbyterian, his parents Scotch; he was also--sober. I proved a poor reporter, and my salary remained at fifteen dollars all the time I was with the paper, yet once he kept a place open for me for many weeks; he even took me back when the consideration was hardly deserved.

That first day, however, I spent on tenterhooks, fully expecting to be "fired" at its end. I found a corner at the big reporters' table, and, having seized some "copy" paper from the general pile, I sat down to write "From Methodism to Running a Saloon," without the faintest idea of how to do it. A dozen reporters sat scribbling near me, but no one paid me the smallest attention. They came and went; at another table Cooper, the City Editor (anglice news-editor) issued the assignments; the editorial writers arrived and sat at their little desks apart; the roar and pandemonium were indescribable; the first edition was going to press, with McCloy in a dozen places at once, but chiefly watching the make-up over the shoulders of the type-setters in the back of the room.... I wrote on and on; I believed it was rather good; no one came to stop me, no one looked at my "copy" or told me what length was wanted; once or twice, McCloy, flashing by, caught my eye, but with a glance that suggested he didn't know who I was, why I was there at all, or what I was writing.... The hours passed; the first edition was already out; the reporters were reading hurriedly their own work in print, delighted Rh