oe 
nr 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
Both Sides 
of 
The Shield 
By Major 
ARCHIBALD W. BUTT, 
One of the Heroes of the 
Titanic and President 
Taft's Military Aid. 
Copyright, 1905, by J. B. Lippincott 
company. All rights reserved. 
CHAPTER lI. 
The City Editor’s Assignment. 
R. PALMER—You will start for the 
south tomorrow and write a se- 
ries of letters on the educational 
and social conditions existing in 
that section. Avoid the cities and 
beaten tracks and let your pic- 
tures be drawn from life. This will be an 
order on the business office for what mon- 
ey you may need. 
Such were the orders I found one 
morning on my desk in the city edi- 
tor’s room of a well known Boston 
newspaper. Of the labor involved in 
such an assignment I was ignorant, 
and I saw only a pleasant trip in that 
part of my country in which I had 
never traveled. I had been employed 
on the paper for a comparatively short 
time—in fact, I had been in journalism 
for a period of less than two years— 
so that such an assignment as the one 
now given me wis highly flattering to 
me, and I knew it would be equally 
gratifying to my father, who had 
watched my career with that interest 
which attaches solely to an only son. 
I had not been out of Harvard very 
long when I had taken the advice of 
an eminent literary man, a friend of 
my father, and entered journalism as 
a first stepping stone to literary dis- 
tinction. The few short stories I had 
written, however, had been returned 
to me by the magazines to which I had 
sent them with a promptness that was 
calculated to dampen my ardor and 
otherwise to discourage me, I had been 
led to believe that my style was excep- 
tionally good and that I was not with- 
out a keen sense of humor, at the same 
time possessing a proper appreciation 
of the pathetic. 
I had taken a prize at the high 
school for an essay, and later, when 
my talents began to develop at the uni- 
versity, I was elected to fill a place on 
the editorial staff of one of the month- 
ly periodicals published there. I was 
chagrined, therefore, when my manu- 
scripts, written legibly on fine linen 
paper, tied with the best silk ribbon 
to be had, came back to me. I began 
to form a very poor opinion of our 
Magazines. Frossessing an indepena- 
ent fortune, I determined to publish 
my writings in book form at my own 
expense. I took my manuscripts to a 
publisher, who, honest man that he 
was, was kind enough to tell me that 
people did not think much of books 
published at the author’s own expense. 
Determined at length to get a proper 
estimate of my work, I sought out an 
old friend of the family who had 
achieved fame by his pen. He review- 
ed my stories and in a ruthless sort of 
way, as it seemed to me then, told me 
that some of my ideas were good, but 
expressed clumsily. He advised me 
to cease all attempts at literary com- 
position and to seek a place on a news- 
paper. “Writing must become a habit 
With you,’ he said, “before you can 
hope to express your thoughts grace- 
fully. What you need most is ease, 
and if you can avoid the pitfalls of 
journalism you may in time succeed in 
your ambition.” It took me just an- 
other six months to make up my mind 
to follow his advice. and when I did 
80 it was with some degree of humilia- 
tion that I discovered that there was 
not a reporter on the paper who did 
net write better than I. Constant ap- 
plication in my new undertaking, how- 
ever, and the hard work I had done at 
the university soon brought me my re- 
ward. It was being singled out con- 
stantly for important local assign- 
ments, and once [ had been sent to 
Washington on a delicate mission. 
I picked up again the order. which 
Jay on my desk and read it over the 
Becond time. I thought I saw the ear- 
marks of politics in it, and, while the 
racial question was not mentioned, I 
believe that it was this problem I was 
to discuss. I had made a suggestion on 
this line some months before, but the 
mineging editor had not taken kindly 
tc the idea at the time. The order as 
I read it over seemed indefinite, I 
thought, and I started with it to the 
managing editor’s room, As I present- 
ed myself before that austere little 
erpple—physical, but not mental, for 
mentally he was a giant—I was out- 
wardly calm, but my heart was beat- 
ing a tattoo inside, for there were few 
of us who did not fear to stand before 
him unless very sure of the ground on 
which we stood. I said, however, ina 
businesslike way, as if such assign- 
ments were daily occurrences to me: 
“TJ have come to see you about this 
assignment, sir.” 
“What assignment?’ he asked. 
“Ror me to go south tomorrow.” I 
answered. 
“Oh, you are Palmer, are you?” he 
said, calmly looking me over through 
his spectacles. “I thought you were 
older. I have noticed your work and 
gave you the present assignment on 
account of it. Have you come to say 
you are not equal to it?” 
I was somewhat surprised when I 
learned that he did not even remem- 
ber me. but the fact that he had iude- 
Rants r?- 
“Oh, you are Palmer, are you?” 
ed me by my work was at least grati- 
fying, so I hastened to say: 
“No, sir.- I feel perfectly able to do 
the work, but the order appears a little 
indefinite to me as to time.” 
Without looking up again, for he had 
resumed his proofreading, he said: 
“Take your own time, but I shall 
say two months ought to suffice. 
What I want are facts, not discolored, 
Historted pictures.” 
[To BE CONTINUED.] 
Bull Chasing In London, 
From the time of King John till 1839 
Nov. 13 was known as bull running 
day in Staiiford. A seventeenth cen- 
tury historian gives an interesting ac- 
count of the observance. 
“The butchers provide the bull and 
place him overnight in a stable belong- 
ing to the alderman. The next morn- 
ing proclamation is made by the bell- 
man that each one shut up his shop 
door and gate and none under pain of 
imprisonment do any violence to stran- 
gers; none to have any iron upon their 
bull clubs er other staves, which they 
pursue the bul) with. Which procla- 
mation being made and the gates all 
shut up, the bull is turned out of the 
alderman’s house, and then hivie skivy, 
tagrag, men, women and children of all 
sorts and sizes, with all the dogs in the 
town running after him.” 
At the close of the chase the animal 
was killed and its fesh sold at a nomi- 
nal rate to the burghers.—London Spec: 
tater 
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