THE REPORTER’S EYE
should be found recorded therein. The fact that you were discovered at two in the morning seated on a wood-pile, rocking a loose plank and singing hush-a-by-baby, evidently suffering from the hallucination that you were performing a sweet domestic duty, would be a very interesting item to serve up for the delectation of the people who live next door to you, and indeed to all those who know you. Now why should I rob them of that pleasure. Then the supplicant is heard as to why. If it is a first offence the city editor, following the Magistrate’s rule, in all probability grants the prayer. This is the case of a man who has substantial standing in the community. But all kinds turn up on the same errand. A York street tough came in one day, and in a manner which was a curious blending of promises and threats, asked to have his name suppressed.
“You want your name kept out? Why it’s been in our paper a dozen times for worse things than fighting. Go away boy, go away.”
“Say, nobsy, I’ve got a new girl and she’ll give me the shake if she sees that.”
“Can’t do it sir.”
“Well, say, just make it read that I knocked the tar out o’ Mulligan will you, and that’ll make it all right.”
Sometimes a clerk in an office or store creeks up the stairs and implores you for God’s sake not to insert his name. He’ll lose his situation, and when you agree to do so the gratitude that looks out of his watery eyes is unmistakable. The poor fellow, in spending a five dollar bill on his drunk, probably swallowed a whole week’s salary, and has been thereby sufficiently punished. To this specimen the whole business possesses a ghastly seriousness, but there is another class who treat it as a huge joke. It has been noticed that men of this sort are usually Englishmen, and their desire to have their name omitted from the Police court roster has its rise in their fear of the ridicule of their fellows rather than any loss of character or position in consequence of its being made public.