FullReads

It was about ten o’clock on the night before Christmas, and very cold. Christmas Eve is a very-much-occupied evening everywhere, in a newspaper office especially so, and all of the twenty and odd reporters were out that night on assignments, and Conway and Bronson were the only two remaining in the local room. They were the very best of friends, in the office and out of it; but as the city editor had given Conway the Christmas-eve story to write instead of Bronson, the latter was jealous, and their relations were strained. I use the word “story” in the newspaper sense, where everything written for the paper is a story, whether it is an obituary, or a reading notice, or a dramatic criticism, or a descriptive account of the crowded streets and the lighted shop-windows of a Christmas Eve. Conway had finished his story quite half an hour before, and should have sent it out to be mutilated by the blue pencil of a copy editor; but as the city editor had twice appeared at the door of the local room, as though looking for some one to send out on another assignment, both Conway and Bronson kept on steadily writing against time, to keep him off until some one else came in. Conway had written his concluding paragraph a dozen times, and Bronson had conscientiously polished and repolished a three-line “personal” he was writing, concerning a gentleman unknown to fame, and who would remain unknown to fame until that paragraph appeared in print.

The city editor blocked the door for the third time, and looked at Bronson with a faint smile of sceptical appreciation.

“Is that very important?” he asked.

Bronson said, “Not very,” doubtfully, as though he did not think his opinion should be trusted on such a matter, and eyed the paragraph with critical interest. Conway rushed his pencil over his paper, with the tip of his tongue showing between his teeth, and became suddenly absorbed.

“Well, then, if you are not very busy,” said the city editor, “I wish you would go down to Moyamensing. They release that bank-robber Quinn to-night, and it ought to make a good story. He was sentenced for six years, I think, but he has been commuted for good conduct and bad health. There was a preliminary story about it in the paper this morning, and you can get all the facts from that. It’s Christmas Eve, and all that sort of thing, and you ought to be able to make something of it.”

There are certain stories written for a Philadelphia newspaper that circle into print with the regularity of the seasons. There is the “First Sunday in the Park,” for example, which comes on the first warm Sunday in the spring, and which is made up of a talk with a park policeman who guesses at the number of people who have passed through the gates that day, and announcements of the re-painting of the boat-houses and the near approach of the open-air concerts. You end this story with an allusion to the presence in the park of the “wan-faced children of the tenement,” and the worthy workingmen (if it is a one-cent paper which the workingmen are likely to read), and tell how they worshipped nature in the open air, instead of saying that in place of going properly to church, they sat around in their shirt-sleeves and scattered egg-shells and empty beer bottles and greasy Sunday newspapers over the green grass for which the worthy men who do not work pay taxes. Then there is the “Hottest Sunday in the Park,” which comes up a month later, when you increase the park policeman’s former guess by fifteen thousand, and give it a news value by adding a list of the small boys drowned in bathing.

The “First Haul of Shad” in the Delaware is another reliable story, as is also the first ice fit for skating in the park; and then there is always the Thanksgiving story, when you ask the theatrical managers what they have to be thankful for, and have them tell you, “For the best season that this theatre has ever known, sir,” and offer you a pass for two; and there is the New Year’s story when you interview the local celebrities as to what they most want for the new year, and turn their commonplace replies into something clever. There is also a story on Christmas Day, and the one Conway had just written on the street scenes of Christmas Eve. After you have written one of these stories two or three times, you find it just as easy to write it in the office as anywhere else. One gentleman of my acquaintance did this most unsuccessfully. He wrote his Christmas-day story with the aid of a directory and the file of a last year’s paper. From the year-old file he obtained the names of all the charitable institutions which made a practice of giving their charges presents and Christmas trees, and from the directory he drew the names of their presidents and boards of directors; but as he was unfortunately lacking in religious knowledge and a sense of humor, he included all the Jewish institutions on the list, and they wrote to the paper and rather objected to being represented as decorating Christmas trees, or in any way celebrating that particular day. But of all stale, flat, and unprofitable stories, this releasing of prisoners from Moyamensing was the worst. It seemed to Bronson that they were always releasing prisoners; he wondered how they possibly left themselves enough to make a county prison worth while. And the city editor for some reason always chose him to go down and see them come out. As they were released at midnight, and never did anything of moment when they were released but to immediately cross over to the nearest saloon with all their disreputable friends who had gathered to meet them, it was trying to one whose regard for the truth was at first unshaken, and whose imagination at the last became exhausted. So, when Bronson heard he had to release another prisoner in pathetic descriptive prose, he lost heart and patience, and rebelled.