The autobiography of a "newspaper girl,"

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I. I am Committed to the Charge of the

Angels 1

Chapter I. I Am Committed To The Charge Of The Angels

"He shall give his angels charge concerning thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone."

This was the benediction that was brokenly spoken over me, by my venerable relative and guardian, when one day I left my Wisconsin farm home, full of youth and health and confidence, to earn my own living and make a career.

My going away was an important event in that quiet neighborhood, and there were gathered about the little village station in spring-seated wagonettes and hard-seated lumber-wagons, many farmers and their families who stood up high and waved their handkerchiefs to me as the train moved away.

Another time, a few years before, there had also been a little stir in the place over a leave-taking of mine. Then I had gone away to boarding school, a female seminary, where I was told I must study hard and learn my lessons and finally graduate with honors, to show my appreciation of all the sacrifices that were being made in my farm home to give me the advantages of a college education.

"Now, remember/' my relative had said to me at that time, "yon are going away to school so yon can make yonrself capable of taking care of yourself when yon are four years older. You are a poor girl, without a penny you can call your own in all the world. Think of that when you are tempted to have a good time instead of studying hard."

So during the four years at the seminary I remembered it, and though at school I never got the name of being a "book-worm" or a "goodey" — indeed, though I even became a member of a select set known as the "Society of the Ten Imps" — I did study hard, always with the end in view of preparing to support myself. As it seemed to me I should like best to earn my living by writing for the newspapers, I paid particular attention to such studies as I thought would help me in that way, and my "compositions," in which I never described anything that did not really happen to myself or some of my schoolmates, gained for me a sort of local fame.

Then in four years I graduated in a white frock with a piece of embroidery around the bottom — a frock that, I was informed by my relative on the farm, must be especially well taken care of, it having been procured at the village store in exchange for ten pounds of butter and eight dozen eggs.

When I had returned home the summer of my graduation, and my sheepskin diploma had been framed and hung in the parlor to be proudly exhibited to every caller, I set myself to learning stenography and typewriting, with the idea of at once becoming a newspaper reporter. Then I wrote to the editors of all the newspapers I had ever heard of, and offered them my valuable services. Never an answer came back, though I had inclosed a stamped envelope for reply in every letter. I decided that editors must be approached personally, and not by letter, and I concluded that in order to get to the places where editors lived and newspapers were published, I must obtain some sort of situation in a large town. Then I sent out another batch of letters, this time to all the large stores, or shops, that I saw advertised in the semi-weekly newspaper that came to the farm, asking for a position as stenographer and typewriter, at any wages they liked to offer. Out of thirty letters I got one reply offering me a situation. It was from a wholesale grocer in a large Western city, who offered me eight dollars per week to write his letters and keep account of his cash. The situation was accepted, and then came my second leave-taking at the village station, and it was then that I went out into the wide world, happy and confident, though all alone, committed to the charge of the angels.

When I arrived in the city I hunted up a boarding house, where I was to be fed and lodged for five dollars a week. The landlady found me a washerwoman who would do my laundry work for fifty cents a week, and when the next morning I began work in my first situation, I saw that out of my eight dollars weekly salary, I should have left over for clothes and sundries, just two and a half dollars.

For several months I wrote the grocer's letters, kept his cash accounts and made myself, as he frequently told me, his valuable assistant. The grocer's desk was near a very large window over which the curtain was never drawn. The table with my typewriting machine upon it was also placed near this window, and there, among the tastefully displayed exhibits of sugars, coffees, teas, soaps and canned goods, I sat all day and wrote on the machine. People stopped and looked at me, along with the specimen goods in the window, till my face would grow red, tears of embarrassment would roll down my cheeks and my fingers trembled as they flew over the typewriter keys. I knew that the grocer had no intention of making an advertisement of me, yet nevertheless I said to him rather bitterly one day: —

"Mr. Samson, don't you think you had better mark me 'Exhibit A,' so those people out there will know just where to place me among your goods?"

I pointed to the pavement outside, where half a dozen men stood looking into the window. The grocer pulled down the curtain with a bang and carried my typewriter and table over to an obscure corner, where I could no longer serve as an advertisement for the shop.

But just at that time I began to grow tired of the grocery business and decided it was time to start out in newspaper work. So I wrote a long article, heading it "All About Typewriter Girls," and sent it to the editor of the Daily Hustler, the principal newspaper in the city, saying in my note to him, "Please publish this in your next Sunday's paper. It is all true."

Remarkable as it may seem, the next Sunday the article was published on the front page of the paper.

On Monday morning I said to my employer, the wholesale grocer : —

"I shall be leaving you on Saturday night. I am going to be a newspaper reporter."

My reason for thus summarily resigning was that I had seen my article in print, and I doubted not that all I had to do was to go and ask for a situation and find it ready to hand.

During the noon hour I went to the man I had heard referred to as the owner of the paper. His office was on the fifth floor of the great newspaper building. To my knock at his office door he answered "Come in," and then I confronted an elderly, white-whiskered man with a kind face.

"Do you own the paper?" I asked.

"I'm inclined to think I do !" he answered, looking rather amused and surprised.

"Then, will you please give me a situation on it? I had an article on the first page yesterday," I went on. "It was about typewriter girls. Now that I know I can write well enough to be published, I would like a regular salaried position."

"I read your article," he said, "and I thought the editor was giving too much prominence to the first effort of a beginner."

"Why, wasn't it good?" I exclaimed, amazed at such heartless criticism, and terrified at the thought that I had resigned my situation at the grocer's. "I thought you'd give me a place right away, and I told my employer I wouldn't work for him after Saturday night, because I was going to be a newspaper girl."

"A newspaper girl, a newspaper girl !" the old man repeated to himself, musingly. Then he exclaimed suddenly, "Don't think of it, my poor child ! Be anything, but don't be a newspaper girl. Go back to your wholesale grocer and tell him you made a mistake."

He passed his hand over his brow as though trying to smooth out the wrinkles and collect thoughts concerning something that had happened in a time gone by.

"I won't go back !" I replied, planting my feet firmly before his desk and looking at him defiantly. "I won't have the grocer laugh at me, and I'm determined to be a newspaper girl. If you won't give me a place on your paper, I will go to Chicago and gei a place. There are lots of papers there, you know."

"Don't go to Chicago, no, no !" he called out as he jumped up and rushed towards the door through which I was making my indignant exit. "Come here to my office next Monday morning at nine o'clock.j You are so little, I will see if I can find a hole to, stow you away in."

The next Monday morning I appeared, smiling and radiant. The old man showed me a beautiful new typewriter with a wonderfully convenient desk.

"I bought it Saturday, especially for you to write on," he said. "You will be my confidential clerk and secretary in the mornings, and in the afternoons you may try your hand at writing pieces for the editors upstairs. I'll pay you ten dollars a week to start on. It isn't much, but it's all my conscience tells me you'll be worth for the first two or three months."

When I returned to my boarding house one night, I found there a letter, announcing the death of my Wisconsin relative. I cried myself to sleep, and in my dreams I heard again the old familiar voice saying, "He shall give his angels charge concerning thee," and I was comforted.

So it was that I became a "newspaper girl."

Chapter II. The "angels," And What They Were Like

For about two months I was a sort of private secretary and confidential typist to the proprietor of the Daily Hustler, whose office, though in the same building, was far away and removed from the excitement and din of the editorial and reportorial rooms.

During the long intervals between letter-writing, letter-filing, indexing and the straightening of papers on my employer's desk, I would be bidden by the proprietor of the bustling Western paper to think up things for newspaper stories, to go out and walk about the town and see what was happening, to look into shop windows and observe all the new fashions, to go among the city poor and discover their joys and sorrows, to ride on the cable cars that traversed the principal streets of the town, and then to return and write about the things I had seen and heard, on my typewriting machine. Then, seated in his great office armchair, he would critically adjust his goldrimmed spectacles and read over my first attempts at journalism before they were sent upstairs for the editors to pronounce judgment upon.

"That's very bad. Don't send that up," he would sometimes say, as he sadly shook his head over a particularly unpromising literary effort. Or again,

"Well, well, that's not so bad. You might try it on the city editor, but, mind you, I can't promise you that he'll print it. I never interfere with the editorial department." So into his waste-basket went some of my writings, up to the editorial offices went others, till one day my employer said : —

"I hear they have a great fashion-opening round at the Murrill Stores this afternoon. Suppose you go and see if you can write a funny piece about funny fashions. I don't know if they want anything like that upstairs, but if they do, and your piece is up to the mark, they might use it on Sunday."

The "funny piece about funny fashions" made its way to the editorial rooms, and, to my great delight, it appeared the following Sunday, gayly illustrated and signed by a new pen name, "Polly Pollock." A few days after that, appearing at the office one morning a little later than usual, I discovered that the corner which had been taken up with my desk and typewriter was empty. The old man sat busily writing at his desk, and wheeled about to look at me when I shrieked out in tearful and terrified accents : —

"Where's my machine, oh, where's my machine? Is it stolen or have you dismissed me ?"

"Yes, I've dismissed you, Miss Polly Pollock," he said, half smiling, half frowning, "but you've got another situation. My managing editor has engaged you as a society reporter and requires you and your typewriter upstairs in his domains. Go up now and see your new office and your new employer, but don't forget your old one. You're a full-fledged newspaper girl, now, and must take your chances with, the rest."

So I graduated to the top floor of the newspaper building, and was turned over to what proved to be the very tender mercies of the managing editor and his assistants. When I worked in the proprietor's office I had always gone to my duties at nine in the morning and left off at five or six. Now, different hours were required, for I was to be a society reporter, and in the world of society nothing happened before three o'clock in the afternoon, and then things kept on happening till one or two o'clock the next morning. I was told I need not arrive at the office until the middle of the afternoon, and I must expect to stay every night until my work was ready for the next morning's paper.

In the pursuit of news I flitted hither and thither among the leaders and would-be leaders of fashion, taking notes of how Mrs. Brown was giving a pink tea and how Mrs. Green was going to pay a thousand dollars for a dress to be worn at a ball. It was as a society reporter that I gained my first introduction to the world of snobs and snobbery as well as to a world where there was much tenderness and sympathy and charity, — all under the guise of fashion. Shall I ever forget how I was once left on a hat-rack seat in the hall of an aspiring social leader (whose father was a blacksmith and whose mother was a washerwoman) while I heard the lady say to the servant : —

"A reporter, did you say? Well, I suppose I must see her. She may be of use to me."

OF A "JSTEWSPAPEK GIKL" 11

How the hot tears dropped on to that polished hat-rack seat, as I reflected upon the vulgarity and common origin of the woman who thought I might be of "use" to her! And did I not on my return from that interview burst in upon the city editor with denunciations of the lady in question, demanding that I be allowed in my own special column to "do her up !" It was then that I received my first lesson in the art of returning good for evil in the newspaper profession, for instead of being allowed to "do her up/' I was instructed to give her a "good send-off," her husband being a large advertiser.

But one night a silver lining appeared to my journalistic cloud, when I went to the Governor's great mansion on the hill to report the state ball. The Governor's wife told me to come in the next day and have luncheon with her, when she would give me notes of a great many society events that were coming off, and that after that I might call on her once a week, when she would make a point of keeping me well informed of all that society was doing that was worth knowing about. Then she introduced me to her son, who was home for the holidays from Yale, and he said: —

"Will you give me the pleasure of the next waltz ?"

"I am sure reporters are not expected to dance when they go to report state balls," I answered. "And besides, I'm not properly dressed. Why, I've even got a coat and hat on !" but I showed in my face a great longing for the waltz, which I felt that newspaper etiquette bade me refuse.

"Oh, just throw the coat and hat off ! Say, mother, do you object to your son's dancing with a girl in a high-necked dress?" he said banteringly, turning to the first lady of the state.

"Do dance with him," said the lady entreatingly. "Your dress is as pretty and stylish as possible."

So I danced with the Governor's son, and during the dance I forgot I was only a newspaper girl, all alone in the world with nobody but the angels to take charge of me. The Governor's son put me in a cab and told the driver to "drive like lightning back to the Hustler office/' and I wrote a very glowing description of that particular society "function." The city editor praised it, and I said, "Oh, but the ball was lovely ! I took off my coat and hat and waltzed with the Governor's son."

He looked hard at me, then whistled, then tried to smile and look unconcerned, and when I was moving away from his desk, I heard him say to another editor who sat near him: —

"Poor little girl! I didn't have the heart to tell her that she was hired to report balls and not to dance at them with governors' sons."

Then I knew for certain that I had broken a rule of newspaper etiquette, but I could not make myself feel more than half sorry.

I thought I was a very good American in those days, believing, according to the Declaration of Independence, that all men were born free and equal, and that birth and pedigree were not to be considered in the Land of Freedom, but many times after that ball I meditated upon the fact that the Governor's lady was said to be descended from a long line of

OF A "NEWSPAPEE GIEL" 13

British aristocrats, and that in her boudoir she treasured a certain book that told all about her family tree and her coat of arms and what mighty deeds were done by her great-great-great-grandfathers in the times of old England. Then I would think indignantly of the hat-rack experience with the daughter of the washerwoman, and I pondered all those things in my heart. Shall I impress the readers of my memoirs as being altogether un-American, if I confess that even now, over here in England, I am pondering them still?

Honesty compels me to say that during those first few months of my journalistic career there were not very many kind hands stretched out to me by the members of my own sex with whom my reportorial duties brought me in contact. A great many doors were slammed in my face at times ; patronizing airs were shown me at other times, and there were also cringings to me because of the power I was supposed to possess in a newspaper way. So many people "used" me. Flowers were often sent to me — wonderfully costly roses and orchids, tied with ribbons — and there were boxes of candies and presents of books. Along with such attentions, however, came photographs of aspiring society belles and matrons, with very crudely written notices to the effect that Mrs. or Miss So and So, whose photograph was inclosed, was giving a ball or a reception or was going to Europe, so that I early learned not to over-value the flowers and the bonbons.

Once I was sent to a hotel at a summer resort, and a society woman, shaking hands with me, said, "I'm all alone, if you like to have dinner with me to-morrow night. I have no such silly notions, as some persons have, about associating with newspaper women, though, of course, I wouldn't want you to repeat that you had dined with me."

"Don't fear that I shall repeat it, since I will never dine with you!" I replied.

During the winter, only occasionally, when I tramped through the snow on late nights to the various society "functions" to get descriptions of dresses, decorations and people, would the fact that I was cold — so cold sometimes that I could scarcely move my fingers to write the necessary notes — appear to be taken into consideration by society women. They seemed to regard me as a machine to make notes, to hurry away and write them up for my paper. Once, near midnight, I was going my round of evening parties, when, on the piazza of a grand stone mansion from which issued sounds of the revelry of the town's best society, I met a young woman, crouched under one of the porch pillars, a newspaper reporter like myself. She was nearly frozen, her teeth were chattering and she could scarcely speak. After a while she succeeded in explaining to me that she had got her report of the doings at that house, and was waiting on the porch for a cab which she had ordered to call there for her.

"But why didn't you stay inside the house till it came, instead of waiting here in the snow and wind ?" I asked.

"Oh, because when I got my report, I told them I had a cab coming for me and would have to wait, and

I was ushered out of the door, the lady of the house saying, 'Very well, I suppose it will be along in a minute/ Oh, how cruel everybody is !" went on the girl, bitterly. "How I hate them all, how I hate them, and won't I get even with them all, one day !"

Had it not been for the kindness of the mankind, with what I may charitably term the "thoughtlessness" of the womankind, I met in those early days, I should have been in danger of becoming a pessimist and a cynic as regarded humanity; but somehow the "angels," — who turned out to be just plain, practical, ordinary Western American men, — kept my foot from dashing against the stone of unbelief.

Frequently I found difficulty in filling my allotted space, yet notes for that society column I needs must have, so one day it occurred to me that I would call upon the husbands and fathers of the women and girls who gave balls and parties. Into the offices of lawyers, doctors, merchants, bankers and brokers I made my way.

"Your wife gave a party last night, but I couldn't find anyone who would bother to tell me about it. Please tell me what sort of dress she wore, what people were there, and everything."

Thus I would accost the busy merchant at his desk or the much-engaged lawyer among his briefs.

"Why, bless my soul ! I'm not a society man. I leave all that to the women folks. Half the time I'm not even present at their goings on. What's that you say? Obliged to have a report for Sunday's paper? Well, now, let me think."

This was the way I got my news of many an important event. I would be confidentially informed of things that were coming off in the future so that I could go and see about them; and there was more than one business man in that town, who, taking no interest in the fashionable world himself, yet took the pains to jot down little society notes and send them to me at the office. Other news, besides that relating to society affairs, would also come to me in the same way, so that I was often able to go to the city editor and tell him that, although such and such a thing was not in my line, I could put him on to great happenings in the political and commercial world, and he became my firm friend and advocate, prophesying a brilliant future for the latest addition to his staff.

The most unpleasant thing about my work was the late hours which society reporting made it necessary for me to keep. Balls were only in full swing at midnight, and they must be personally attended in order to be described in all their glory. To go to a ball at midnight, get notes and return to the office to write them out for publication in the morning paper, very frequently made the hour at which I could go home as late as one or two o'clock in the morning. At that hour the cable cars had ceased running, and the question of my getting home from the office was at first one that gave me many a bad half hour. I had, without intentional eavesdropping, heard this very subject discussed among the editors and reporters the first time my work had kept me at the office till after midnight.

"Wait here in my room till I see how you are to get home," the city editor said, when I handed him my "copy," and then he went into the big reportorial room, where between fifteen and twenty men were writing away for dear life.

"Of course, we'll have to look after her when the cars are stopped," I heard one of the men say. "One of us one night, another the next, and so on, don't you know."

"Well, / can't do it to-night, anyway. Shan't be finished more than a minute before the paper goes to press. Two hours steady work at this blamed stump speech !"

"See here, old stick-in-the-mud over there ! You've got to take the little girl home to-night, do you hear ? You haven't a thing to do now, and you're just hanging round to watch the rest of us work."

"All right," I heard a voice say, and there was a scraping of a chair over the floor. "But I tell you what. It's an all-fired shame for girls to be working in newspaper offices at night, and I don't care how nice they are as girls, they're nothing but nuisances in a place like this at midnight. While I'm walking home with her, I'll ask the young lady to marry me, and that'll put an end to all our troubles."

I did not wait to hear any more. In consternation, indignation and self-pity, I rushed out of the office, jumped on to the elevator, and, descending from the top to the ground floor, made my way out alone and sorrowful into the midnight street. Never, I vowed, would any member of that newspaper staff again feel obliged to ask me to marry him in order to rid the office of a nuisance.

At first I walked rapidly along the dark and deserted streets which led to my boarding house. My indignant bravery soon gave way to fright and hysterical tears. All the horrible stories I had read and heard of wicked, prowling city ruffians came vividly to my mind. I began to run, when I heard footsteps behind me. Some one was following me. Yes, as I ran faster, the footsteps behind me seemed to turn into long and mighty strides. I ran on, sobbing aloud, and by this time almost crazed with fear of I knew not what. Suddenly, I felt my arm clutched. I was caught — and by a policeman !

"What's the matter with ye? Where ye goin', and where ye been to, all alone at this time o' night? What ye makin' all this noise about ? I've been chasin' ye f er five minutes !"

When the upholder of the city's laws thus addressed me, I sobbed out: —

"Oh, I'm so scared ! I'm a society reporter at the Hustler office, and I started to go home alone and I ran because I was afraid."

"A reporter! Great Scott! Why, I thought ye was a criminal, fleein' from justice !"

The policeman began to laugh, then suddenly sobering, he said: "Come along with me. I'll see ye get home safe to-night."

For several blocks he walked by my side, giving it as his humble opinion that somebody ought to introduce a law into the legislature forbidding young ladies to do newspaper work. At a corner, he stopped.

"Now, I can't go any farther with ye, because this is the end of my beat, but Fll put ye in charge of the officer in the next beat, and hell go as far as he can, and give ye to another officer, till the first thing ye know ye'll be safe home/'

A low whistle brought another policeman to the corner.

"What have you got there?" asked the newcomer.

"A little reporter, scared out of her senses. I've brought her this far, and I wish ye'd see her as far as ye can and then give her over to the officer of the beat where she lives and tell him to take her home."

So I was handed over on that eventful night from the first officer to the second and from the second to the third, who delivered me safe and sound at my own door. I had no sooner closed it behind me than there was a violent pull at the bell. Opening it, I saw standing on the step one of the chief editors of the Hustler staff.

"Thank God you're safe!" he exclaimed. "I just came to wake up your landlady to ask her if you'd got home, and if not we were going to search the town for you. There's a fine row over you at the office, the city editor raising Cain generally and every man blaming every other fellow for allowing you to go home alone. Now, I'll go back and tell them you're all right, so their minds will be at rest, but you mustn't do this again. There's not one of us but would consider it a personal insult for you to think you had to go home alone."