Spring Street | Page 8

which he selected a few short ones.

"Grab a typewriter and rewrite these," he said, handing the clippings to
John. "Keep 'em short. Twenty-five words each. Remember that always.
Keep everything short. Keep your eyes and ears open and read the
papers. Read everything in them. Now get over there and start writing
and I'll call you when I need you."
John knew that as long as he lived he would never forget that first day
in newspaper work. He rewrote the clippings carefully, counting the
words to make certain that they did not exceed the twenty-five ordered
by P. Q. He had done some typewriting at school and practiced more
by filling page after page of copy paper with the old favorite beginner's
sentence, "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the
party," and its twin, "The quick, brown fox jumped over the lazy dog."
He watched in open-mouthed wonder at the speed with which the other
reporters--he counted himself one of them--wrote their stories. He
learned that everything written for a newspaper is a "story," everything
from a three-line item about a meeting of the Colorado State society to
a banner-line murder.
He was fascinated by a reporter whom P. Q. called Brennan and who
worked at a typewriter close to where he was sitting. Brennan,
thin-faced, about thirty, John judged, turned out page after page of
typewritten copy, stopping at the completion of each page to throw
back his head and shout: "Boy! Oh, BOY!" at the ceiling. In response
to this call a copy boy appeared and carried the page to P. Q. As he
worked he smoked cigarettes, lighting each fresh one from the stub of
the one that preceded it. These cigarettes he carefully stood on end on
the desk as his fingers pounded at the typewriter.
When he took a deep inhalation of tobacco smoke during his writing
Brennan paused and gazed, dreamy-eyed, out into space. Then
suddenly, he stood his cigarette on end again and attacked the
typewriter keys furiously. John noticed that Brennan, like the man with
the headgear, used only one finger of each hand in typewriting.
Along in the afternoon, when he had stopped hammering at his
machine, he turned to find John staring at him. Stretching out his arms,

yawning, he asked:
"New man?"
John said he was.
"First time?"
John said it was.
From Brennan, John learned many things. He learned that P. Q. had an
unswerving prejudice against reporters who used the touch system in
typewriting.
"He says they use a typewriter like it was a piano and get into the habit
of not looking at what they are writing," Brennan explained. "He says
the touch system has ruined more reporters than shorthand."
"Why shorthand?" asked John. "I thought----"
"I know, you thought every good reporter should write shorthand," said
Brennan. "Well, that's one thing P. Q. and I agree on. I've seen a lot of
them in my time and I've never seen a reporter who wrote shorthand
who was a real star man. Writing shorthand kills your imagination. All
you write is what other people tell you and exactly as they said it.
Somehow, a shorthand man doesn't get pep into his stuff, take it from
me."
John thought he understood.
"You work hard and long in this game and it makes an old man of you
before your time," Brennan continued. "But it's a great game. Once it
gets into your blood you're a newspaper man for life.
"Generally speaking, there are two kinds of reporters. One is the kind
with a nose for news and without any particular ability to write. The
other is the kind that can write without being able to get the news for
themselves. When you get the two in one, a man who can write and get
the news himself, you've got a star, but they are few and far between.

"P. Q. says once in a while that I can write and I think I'm a demon
news-getter and there you are--that's me.
"Let me tell you how it is about writing a story. Suppose Mary Jones,
aged 18, of 1559 Fifty-Ump street, shop girl, kills herself and leaves a
note saying she did it because the man she loved threw her over. It's no
story to write it that 'Mary Jones, 18 years old, a shop girl, who resided
at 1559 Fifty-Ump street, ended her life today because of an unhappy
affair with an unnamed man.'
"Plain 'Mary Jones' isn't the story. Probably only fifty people in the city
know her. What do the others care? Not much. This is your story--'An
18-year-old girl who dreamed of a Prince Charming to come and carry
her away from a monotonous life behind