Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/147

 or precinct of the policeman, or the place or time of the occurrence, or the time or place of the arrest; if so, "Run, get back and get your facts!" growled the city editor. And the chances were good that not a line of it would be printed in the paper after all.

Reporting was a very different job from "Journalism," as he had pictured it from a romantic distance. He did not breathe a word concerning his high ideals about the Power of the Press—except possibly on Sundays, to his mother up in Harlem—and his worthy ambition to cleanse it he had postponed indefinitely. His present ambition, though he did not confide this to anybody, was to keep from being sworn at by the city editor, who sometimes made him feel that he had missed his calling. It is at this stage that most of them (who go into newspaper work, calling it Journalism) quit and try something else, and shudder ever afterward at the mention of reporting.

Rufus did not quit, because, if you care to know it, he intended to become a great writer some day, and he believed that this was the way to go about it. He thought a little dis-