Chapter II: The Printer Boy Becomes a Reporter

“Here, Dick! Wash the small rollers and be quick about it.”

“Well, this is a funny old world,” Dick said to himself. “Last night some of the big editors were calling me Mr. Sumner and telling me I’d written a good article, and this morning I’m only ‘Here, Dick!’ again.”

But he picked up the black sponge and began the inky work as cheerfully as a boy could who had been up all night and lived for two or three hours in a dream.

He had taken an early train from the city, and by walking from the railway had reached home in time for a bite of breakfast before he opened the office as usual. Not a word did he say to any of his fellow-printers about what he had done; but a copy of The Daily Transport was carefully folded up in his coat pocket. He thought more of that one than any of the other copies that he had bought at the news stands, because it was the one that had been given him in the office. It was a sort of sacred relic to him, important enough to be framed.

Somehow the saw-mill project seemed miles away now. There was little chance of such a piece of news happening in his way again, but it did not seem possible that he could be taken away from the types and presses, after such an experience.

“Here, Dick!”

It amused him more now than ever, the constant calling of “Here, Dick!” But this call came from the editor’s room, and he hurriedly washed the worst of the black from his hands.

“I have just been reading your article in The Daily Transport, Dick,” the editor said. “You gave them the facts very correctly, and they must have turned them over to a good man to write the story, for he has done it capitally. Do you know who it was?”

“I wrote the article myself, sir,” Dick answered modestly.

“What!” the editor exclaimed; “you wrote the article! Well, that’s strange. You know I used to have something to do with the Transport myself, and of course I know that when a stranger goes in with important news they have him tell it to one of the reporters, and the reporter writes the article. Tell me how it happened that they let you write it.”

Dick gave a brief account of all his experiences in the Transport office, not forgetting his first statement to the night city editor that was overheard by the night editor, the cutting and changing of his copy, and the compliment that the night editor paid him.

“Well, I am glad to hear that,” Mr. Davis said when he had heard the whole story. “I am really glad to hear that, Dick. You did them a first-rate piece of work, and you have evidently established yourself in the good opinion of the night editor. You don’t know how much that means, but I do. I know Dr. Goode, the night editor, very well. Almost every newspaper man around New York knows him and loves him, for he is one of the dearest old men in the world. He is always on the lookout for bright young men who can be turned into good reporters; and if I am not much mistaken he has you in his eye and you will hear from him again.”

“But I had only given the young editor a very brief account of the accident when Dr. Goode took me in charge, sir,” Dick interrupted.

“That’s it exactly,” Mr. Davis continued; “and Dr. Goode overheard you, and he saw in a minute that you had the story properly laid out in your mind and knew how to handle it. That was why he took you out of the young editor’s hands and looked after you himself. You see the young man, the night city editor, has charge of the city news at night, but Dr. Goode, the night editor, has charge of the whole paper at night, under the managing editor. Your plain, straightforward way of writing evidently pleased him, and I am afraid that before the year is up I shall lose one of the best office boys I ever had.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Dick, blushing furiously. “You are very kind to say so; but I don’t think there is any danger of that.”

There was great danger of it, however, and steps to bring it about were in progress at that very moment.

“Don’t take too much credit to yourself, though, Dick,” Mr. Davis went on with a smile. “I don’t want to see you spoiled at the start. Remember that circumstances had more to do with it than you had. If Russellville were not such a little out-of-the-way place, there would be some newspaper correspondent here, and then you would have had no chance at all. If Dr. Goode had not accidentally overheard you telling the story, he could not have taken a fancy to your way of telling it. But that is the way things always go; we are creatures of accident. The bright man takes advantage of the accidents and turns them to good account, and that is exactly what you did.”

Dick might not have set type as complacently that morning if he had known all that the night editor did before he went home. The young printer was hardly out of the Transport office before Dr. Goode took up a small slip of paper and wrote a brief note to the city editor with his ever-present blue pencil.

“Dear John,” he said in the note, “the young man who did the Governor
Wright beat for us this morning is Richard Sumner, of Russellville.

“He has a nose for news and he writes good English.

“You might make a reporter of him, if you have a vacancy.
“Yours, J. B. G.”

When the city editor reached his desk at ten o’clock in the morning he found this note among a dozen others, and, after reading it, he laid it under a paper weight till the rush of morning work was over. Then he took it up again and wrote a very short letter to “Mr. Richard Sumner, Russellville,” and sent it to the mail box. The fewer letters a man gets the longer he takes to answer them; and the city editor of the Transport gets so many that he answers each one on the instant.

Dick was in blissful ignorance of all this; and when he was sent after the evening mail, about five o’clock, it gave him a start to find a letter addressed to himself, with The Daily Transport printed across the envelope in big type.

“Dear Sir,” the letter read, “I should be glad to have you call and see me at The Daily Transport office any day before six o’clock P.M.

“Truly yours, J. H. Brown, _City Editor_.”

When Dick showed this note to the editor of the Record, that gentleman merely gave an “I-told-you-so” smile and said: “Those fellows don’t waste much time, do they?” But when he read it at home before supper to his mother and Florrie, it threw the household into confusion.

“O Dick!” his mother exclaimed; and Dick noticed that she turned her head away, “they want you to write more for them, I know they do; and to think that I almost wanted you to leave the business and work in a saw-mill! Of course they would send for you, you write so well; and your being a printer is a great help, for you could help to print the paper.”

“I don’t believe that’s what it is about,” said Florrie. Happy as she was over Dick’s success, she could not help teasing him a little. “I think Dick has made some bad mistake in his article, and they want him to come and explain it.”

But while she spoke Florrie stood behind his chair stroking his head; and more than one Russellville boy would have been glad to sit in Dick’s chair at that moment.

“You must not have such an idea, mother,” Dick answered. “I have great hopes that they will give me something to do, from what Mr. Davis told me to-day. But it would be something very small, at the best. It was not my writing they cared for, but the news I took them. I can write a plain statement well enough, but what is that compared with the way that most of those Transport men can write? Even if they give me a chance, I may not be able to please them.”

It was fortunate for Dick that he was as honest with the city editor a few days later as he was with his mother. Men go to see the city editor every day who try to pass themselves for something they are not, and the editor sees through their little deception in a minute and shakes them off. But Dick told everything about himself frankly. Instead of trying to magnify himself he said that he was working in a printing-office for three dollars a week; that he was a little past eighteen years old, and had been through the Russellville public school.

“I’m afraid I am not as good a speller as I ought to be, sir,” he added doubtfully.

The editor smiled.

“That doesn’t make the least difference,” he said. “One of the best reporters I ever had spelled door d-o-a-r. If a reporter can get the news, the printers will see to his spelling.”

They talked for ten or fifteen minutes, and the editor liked Dick’s honest, manly way.

“Well,” said he in conclusion, “we will take you on trial as a reporter. You can begin to-morrow morning, if you like, and report to me at ten o’clock. The salary will be fifteen dollars a week.”

The salary will be fifteen dollars a week. The salary will be fifteen dollars a week. Dick kept saying it over and over to himself as he went down the stairs. Perhaps there was some mistake about it. No, that was what the editor said, fifteen dollars a week. He was rather alarmed at it. For such a salary they would expect more of him than he was capable of. Fif-teen dollars a w-e-e-k! Fifteen times fifty-two is 780; seven hundred and eighty dollars a year!

When Dick reported for duty the next morning he felt that he was beginning a new life. Mr. Davis had released him immediately from the Record office, and he was no longer a printer’s boy. He had a vague idea that he would be sent out to a good street corner to pick up some of the things that are constantly occurring in New York. Maybe he would happen upon a fire, or it might be the catching of a pickpocket, or somebody run over.

But his first morning’s experience was very different from this. After reporting to the city editor he was told to sit down and wait; and he sat in one of the chairs from ten o’clock till half-past two without anybody paying the slightest attention to him. Other men came in and got their orders and went out again, but Dick seemed to be entirely forgotten.

“I wonder whether Mr. Brown thinks I’m too young, now he’s had a second look at me,” he said to himself. “It’s very strange. Here they’re paying me two dollars and a half a day, and they don’t give me anything to do.”

It was a great relief to him when one of the reporters, a man whom he remembered seeing in the office on the night of his first visit, came up and spoke to him. Dick remembered him particularly because he was the handsomest man in the office and seemed to have a pleasant word for everybody. He was very dark, with a silky black mustache, and was extremely well dressed.

“Well, my boy,” said this handsome reporter, “you’re going to be a newspaper man, are you?”

“I hope so, sir,” Dick answered. “But I’ve not done much so far. They haven’t given me anything to do yet to-day.”

“Oh, you needn’t worry about that!” the man laughed. “I suppose you are on salary, so you’ll soon have enough to do. You’ll only get little jobs at first, till they see what you can do. Thought of going out to try and pick up some news? Oh, you couldn’t do that. We very seldom pick up news. You see that book on the city editor’s desk? That is what we call the assignment book. The city editor knows everything that should happen in the city to-day, all the routine things, and he makes a list of them in his book. Then he assigns one man to attend to each thing. There’s a conference in the mayor’s office at three o’clock, and he wants Jack Randall to attend to it (I’m Jack Randall); so he writes my name opposite the entry, and that’s my business for the afternoon. I must be off. If you get stuck on anything, come to me and I’ll help you out. Ta-ta.” Handsome Jack Randall tapped Dick lightly on the shoulder and was off, little thinking how much pleasanter he had made the day for the new reporter.

By three o’clock Dick began to feel the gnawings of hunger; but his new friend Randall was gone, and he had no one to ask what was the reporters’ lunch hour. After some hesitation he stepped up to the city editor and asked:--

“Could I go out for a few minutes to get something to eat, sir?”

Mr. Brown leaned far back in his armchair and looked Dick pleasantly in the face, in a very reassuring manner.

“Go out just whenever you like, Mr. Sumner,” he answered, “and eat all you want. You don’t need to ask permission. And when you come back make yourself as comfortable as you can. We don’t have any slave rules in the Transport office.”

It was new to Dick to feel at liberty to go in and out as he liked. One of the cheap restaurants in the neighborhood of Printing House Square supplied the food he needed, and he was soon back in his chair. He saw that the city editor had a pile of fresh newspapers on his desk, and was busy reading them. They were the early editions of the afternoon papers.

“Mr. Sumner!” said the editor, looking toward Dick; and Dick hastened to him. Here was work evidently for him to do, and he was anxious to make a beginning. The editor had a small clipping in his hand, just cut from one of the newspapers.

“Here is something for you to do this evening, Mr. Sumner,” the editor said. “There is to be a meeting of the Stonecutters’ Protective Union, in Germania Hall, that you can attend. They seldom do anything but make speeches, and the whole thing probably will not be worth more than four or five lines. But you must always be on the lookout for anything unusual, of course, that might make it of more importance. Hand your copy to the night city editor; and have it in as early as you can, please.”

“Yes, sir,” Dick answered as he took the printed slip the editor handed him. He was a little disappointed, but of course he did not show it. Mr. Randall had told him that he would get only small jobs at first; but to write four or five lines for a day’s work seemed to him rather discouraging.

“Well, my boy,” one of the older reporters said to him as he resumed his seat, “you’ve got your first assignment, have you? Let me see; oh, the stonecutters’ union;” and the man laughed; “you’ll get plenty of those little jobs till they find out what you can do. It’s by doing these little things well that you’ll gradually work into better ones.”

“I suppose a man must begin at the beginning, sir,” Dick replied; and then wondered at what he had said, for he had never called himself a man before. But he sat down and began to study his slip carefully. At eight o’clock, so the slip said, the meeting was to be held; and there would be several addresses by prominent speakers. He laid it out in his mind just how his few lines should be worded. He was glad to think that it would take some little skill, at any rate, to condense a report of a meeting into four or five lines.

It was not six o’clock yet when Dick left the office, and he had plenty of time for a leisurely walk up the Bowery. He had often seen the Bowery before, but never had it seemed so bright and busy to him. Instead of being merely a visitor now he had business there, business for a great newspaper, and he was actually a reporter going after information.

The meeting proved to be very different from what Dick expected. The big hall was crowded, and the two factions in the union could not agree. One of the speakers was mobbed and injured, several shots were fired, the police rushed in with their clubs, and chairs were freely used as missiles. It was anything but a routine meeting.

“Why!” Dick said to himself as he hurried back to the office after eleven o’clock, “in Russellville we’d half-fill the paper with such a thing. Even in New York it must be worth more than four or five lines. I think the city editor would want me to write a little more than that--say fifteen or twenty lines, as several people were hurt.”

The whole appearance of the office was changed when he reached it. The day staff of editors had gone home and the night staff had taken their places, and the big room was brilliant and hot. Nobody paid any attention to him, for every one was busy. The night city editor’s only information about Dick’s work was in the single line in the assignment book:

“Meeting of Stonecutters, Germania Hall--Sumner.”

Dick sat down at his desk and wrote on the manilla office paper:--

“At the meeting of the Stonecutter’s Protective Union, held in Germania Hall last evening, the two factions in the society came to blows, and several persons were seriously injured, besides one man being shot. The Hon. George R. Heard, member of Assembly, made an address; and some of the members, taking exception to his remarks, attacked him with chairs and table legs, and he was so badly hurt that an ambulance had to be called to take him to Bellevue Hospital. The police rushed in with drawn clubs, and several shots were fired. One man was hit by a bullet, but his name could not be ascertained. The hall, which was crowded, was cleared by the police.”

“There!” Dick said to himself after he had read the page a dozen times and made some changes each time; “I think that tells the story. If only I have not made it too long. Jack Randall would tell me if he were here, but he is out. I don’t think this will be too much about it.”

He walked over to the night city editor’s desk and handed in his page of copy, as he saw the other reporters do.

“A meeting of stonecutters, sir,” he said.

“Very well,” the night city editor replied, scarcely looking up. But he took his blue pencil and checked Dick’s name in the assignment list and laid the page of copy on top of a heap of such pages. It must take its turn, and it might not come under his eye for an hour yet. Dick went to his seat and took up a newspaper, but he waited anxiously to learn the fate of his first day’s work as a reporter.

It was nearly midnight when Dick’s copy was picked up by the editor, and he was looking at the moment in another direction.

“Hello here!” he heard the editor exclaim. “What’s this? what’s this? Assemblyman Heard injured and taken to Bellevue Hospital; another man shot! Why, this was a riot; we must have a column of this! Who was such a-- Oh, this is Sumner, a new man. Here, Mr. Sumner, please.”

Dick was dazed as he stepped up to the editor’s desk. It was plain that he had made a terrible blunder.

“I am afraid you do not appreciate the value of news, Mr. Sumner,” the editor said. “A stonecutters’ meeting is worth only a few lines, but a riot at such a meeting is a very different thing. We must have a much better account of this. You sit down and tell all the facts you have to Mr. Herrick here. Mr. Herrick, you take Sumner’s facts and write the story. Mr. Black, call up Bellevue Hospital on the telephone, and inquire how badly Assemblyman Heard has been hurt. Get Police Headquarters, too, and ask for all particulars. We must know something about the man who was shot. Mr. Banks, you will find a biography of Assemblyman Heard in the library; write me a brief account of his life, please,--about two sticks. We must have this ready in half an hour, gentlemen, if possible.”

Three men set to work to do over again the report that Dick had made a failure with! He was ready to sink through the floor, but he sat down and gave Mr. Herrick as complete an account of the meeting as he could. It was easy to see now that the news was of importance, and he wondered at himself for not seeing it before. The order for four or five lines had misled him.

Before one o’clock the new report was ready, nearly a column of it, the different parts of it neatly joined together by Mr. Herrick. Oh, how skilfully that man handled the matter, Dick thought, and how well he knew just where to bring in Mr. Black’s part of the story and Mr. Banks’ biography.

“A nice thing to have to tell mother and Florrie,” Dick said to himself as he went sadly down the stairs; “to make such a break as that, and have my work done over again. I’m afraid I haven’t got the brains to work for a big city paper, that’s about the amount of it. Anyhow I don’t suppose they’ll want me any longer now that they see what I am. It will seem hard to go back to washing rollers and sweeping out the office after thinking myself a reporter; but it’s all my own stupidity.”

Turning one of the sharp corners at a landing, Dick almost ran into Dr. Goode, who had been out eating his midnight lunch. The doctor wore only one pair of glasses now, and he had to look closely to see who was before him.

“Oh, it’s you, Sumner, is it?” he asked as he recognized the new reporter. “I see you had a little misfortune with your assignment to-night. But never mind, my boy;” and he laid his hand kindly on Dick’s shoulder. “Such things happen to new men sometimes; we rather expect them. It’s not the first mistake we mind, but having the same mistake made over and over. Keep your spirits up, and you’ll soon be doing some good work for us.”