He went down to the office early and wrote diligently--about two thousand
words. When he had finished, the Night City Editor told him that he might
go as there would be nothing more that night.
He was in the street at seven the next morning. As he walked along with a
News-Record, bought at the first news-stand, he searched every page: first,
the larger "heads"--such a long story would call for a "big head;" then the
smaller "heads"--they may have been crowded and have had to cut it down;
then the single-line "heads"--surely they found a "stickful" or so worth
printing.
At last he found it. A dozen items in the smallest type, agate, were
grouped under the general heading "City Jottings" at the end of an inside
column of an inside page. The first of these City Jottings was two lines in
length:
"The millions were in the Central Park yesterday, lazily drinking at that
vast trough of country air in the heart of the city."
As he entered the office Howard looked appealingly and apologetically at
the boy on guard at the railing and braced himself to receive the sneering
frown of the City Editor and to bear the covert smiles of his fellow
reporters. But he soon saw that no one had observed his mighty spring for a
foothold and his ludicrous miss and fall.
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