CHAPTER IX

FEATURE STORIES

Kinds of Feature Stories. Most news stories, it has been seen, aim to be nothing more than concise presentations of the essential facts concerning current events. They are intended primarily to inform rather than to instruct or entertain. In a feature story, on the other hand, the writer takes the day’s events and tries to present entertaining or instructive phases of them that cannot well be developed in the limited compass of the news story itself.

For one type of feature story the reporter takes the facts of the news and finds behind them the real meaning of the event to those who play a part in it. The event thus becomes an episode in the drama of human life, sometimes comic, sometimes tragic. Such a story involves feelings as well as facts. To write it successfully the reporter must be able to see the picturesque, humorous, and pathetic phases of life about him; he must feel with those to whom the events mean much. Keen insight into human nature, and sympathy with its strength and its weakness, are essential. This type of story, which is often called the “human interest” story, enjoys no small degree of popularity because it appeals to the reader’s feelings. In some newspapers it takes a place of prominence beside the best news stories; in many of them it is given a less conspicuous position; only a few neglect it entirely.

Another kind of feature story, quite different in character, undertakes to explain, interpret, and describe fully significant phases of the day’s news and timely topics generally. Brief news stories often arouse the reader’s curiosity to know more of the persons and things that they mention. It remains for the feature story to supply causes, motives, results,—the full significance of the bare facts of the news. Accordingly, some newspapers set aside two or three columns on the editorial pages each day for a feature story of this kind. In magazine sections of Saturday and Sunday issues such articles are supplied in greater numbers. These feature stories are frequently illustrated. They seldom fill less than a column; more often they are several columns in length.

“Human Interest” Stories. Material for the “human interest” type of feature story is to be found anywhere and everywhere in the reporter’s daily round of news gathering. The many police court cases furnish an abundance of humorous and pathetic incidents. Accidents and minor crimes of all kinds many times are worth only a few lines as news, but as the basis for feature stories, they contain great possibilities. An incident in a crowded street car, a mishap on the street, a bit of conversation between two newsboys, a mistake made by a person unaccustomed to the ways of the metropolis, or any one of the hundred little episodes in the daily life of a city may be taken by the reporter as the subject of his feature story. Little children, because of the great appeal that they make to men and women of all classes, often furnish good material. Animals, wild or tame, are always available as subjects. A visit to the “zoo” is sure to furnish at least one good story. For the alert reporter with a knowledge of human nature and an appreciation of the humor and the pathos of life, there is never any dearth of material.

Style in Feature Stories.—Feature stories require some literary ability beyond that necessary for routine reporting. From the point of view of its composition the feature story is like a miniature short story. Therefore no definite rules can be laid down for its treatment. There need be no summary of essential facts at the beginning as in the typical news story. Like the short fiction story, the feature story may begin in any way that will attract the reader’s attention, and may be developed by conversation, by narration, or by description that suggests rather than portrays in great detail. A good feature story frequently tells itself; all that the writer does is to record the incidents without comment or adornment. A simple, restrained treatment is far preferable to elaboration of detail. Pathos can easily be made bathos, and humor can readily descend to cheap buffoonery.

The style of humorous and pathetic feature stories needs careful attention. Words must be chosen not only with reference to their general meaning but with consideration for the feelings which have come to be associated with them and which they therefore arouse in the reader. One word with the wrong connotation may spoil the whole effect of an otherwise well-written pathetic story. As in the structure of the feature story so in its style, no definite rules or principles can be laid down to guide the reporter. Careful reading of well-written short stories and novels will show him various methods of producing the effects that he desires.

The rescue of a small boy from drowning in a cistern would ordinarily pass unnoticed in the newspapers of a large city and might be worth a few lines in those of a small one. A reporter with a sense of humor might see something in the incident that would make good material for a humorous feature story, as did the reporter on the Chicago Tribune, who wrote it in the following form. The editor gave the story a place on the front page.

“Billy” Dyer, 2 year old son of William Dyer, owner of the Dyer foundry in Chicago, was playing in the yard of his home at 1716 North Elmwood avenue, Hyde Park, yesterday with his little sister Mary. Suddenly “Billy,” who was standing on the wooden top of a cistern, disappeared.

There was nothing supernatural in his disappearance, because the wood in the cistern cover was rotten, but it struck little Mary as being so remarkable that she lost the power of speech. She is little more than a year old, and she couldn’t talk much, anyway.

Just at this moment a peddler came into the backyard. He saw Mary gazing fixedly at the open cistern and asked her what she saw.

“Bruvver’s down there,” vouchsafed Mary, regaining her tongue and pointing.

The peddler took a look into the cistern and then seized a near-by mop. “Billy’s” head was still bobbing above the surface of the water when the peddler got back with the mop, but when he looked into the cistern again the boy slipped off the cover of the cistern, which had gone down with him, and went under. The peddler waited until the boy’s head appeared again and then he deftly stuck the end of the mop under Billy’s chin and pinned his head against the masonry.

Meanwhile the peddler had not been silent. Mrs. Dyer heard his shouts, and, gathering their portent, rushed to the telephone and called the fire department. Axel Hansen also heard the sounds. Axel has long legs. He came running.[Pg 215]

When Axel looked into the cistern a scheme of rescue immediately formulated itself in his mind. He got down on his knees and told the terrified Mrs. Dyer and some neighbors to take a good hold on his ankles. The peddler was busy holding “Billy’s” head above the water with his mop.

Then Axel let himself head foremost down into the cistern. His legs were just long enough to reach. With outstretched arms he was able to get “Billy” by the scruff of the neck. Having got a good grip, he ordered “Hoist away.” Mrs. Dyer and the neighbors hoisted, and in a moment “Billy,” scared and much bedraggled, was safe in his mother’s arms. The fire department arrived about this time.

“O, look at the pretty firemen,” exclaimed Mary, and turned her entranced gaze away from the cistern to the new object of interest.

The capture of an unusually large turtle, in and of itself, has little news value, but out of the incident a New York Sun reporter by simple literary devices worked up a feature story that holds the reader’s interest and makes an entertaining little “yarn.”

They that go down to Gravesend Bay in fishing craft were talking about It all day yesterday in the back room of Hogan’s place. Here, where swings the lantern that once lighted emperors of China on their way to bed and to the rope of which there hangs a wondrous tale, and where the pistol that shot O’Donovan Rossa lies in its evil rust, the fishermen gathered and roared in each others’ ears about It. Between whiles they all went up to Lew Morris’s barn and gazed at It. It was the biggest that any of them had ever seen. Also It[Pg 216] was old. You could tell that by the barnacles that covered It. It was prodded over on Its ancient back by inquisitive toes and It slapped itself across Its chest like a cabby on a cold night.

Lew told how he caught It. He and Hogan went out in a rowboat about 9 o’clock yesterday morning to look over their weakfish nets. It was flopping around in Lew’s best net. Lew leaned over and got hold of a flipper. He found himself in all sorts of trouble right away and called for Hogan. The latter changed position too quickly and they both went in. Lew had hold of the flipper and never let go. If Al Girard and Nelse Williams hadn’t come along in a launch just then there is no telling what would have happened. Al and Nelse got Hogan and Lew out and Lew had hold of the flipper.

It is the biggest turtle—there, it’s out now—that ever has been caught in Gravesend. A deep sea turtle at that and weighs anywhere from 150 to 200 pounds.

Lew hasn’t said yet what he will do with the turtle, but he hints darkly of soup. Maybe it isn’t a soup turtle.

How a bit of information gleaned from a janitor may furnish the basis for an amusing little story, developed almost entirely by conversation, in this instance with the added flavor of Irish brogue, is well illustrated by this example taken from the New York Tribune:

Mike, one of the cleaners at the Hall of Records, beamed with satisfaction yesterday afternoon—so much so that every one noticed it. The corners of his mouth wrinkled upward, and he acted as if he had found a pocketbook for which there would be no claimant.[Pg 217]

“It’s all about thim clocks,” said Mike.

“The clocks in this building?”

“The same—the same,” said Mike. “Ye see, we’ve had the divil’s own time wid these clocks, but they’re all right now. They’re all together, like people at the pay window on Saturday afthernoon. I wisht I had the wurrud to fit what has happened to thim clocks. They’s a rare wurrud for it, an’ I heard wan of the assistants up in Pendleton’s office spit it out careless like whin he went out to lunch to-day. But thim clocks is near killin’ all av us. They’re run by electricity, an’ the city paid enough f’r thim to have thim right. But not till to-day have they all struck together, like bricklayers on a job wid the contract time limit two days off. To-day they all got busy to wanst, and now they’re runnin’ dead heats. But I wisht I had the wurrud that tells what happened to thim.”

“Didn’t they keep correct time till to-day?”

“They did not,” said Mike, emphatically. “In the Register’s office the clock took itself for a six-cylinder auto goin’ to the Polo Grounds, and rushed the clerks out of the office an hour and a half ahead of time. Up in the Corporation Counsel’s office it was usually 6 o’clock p. m. whin the honest old City Hall clock gave the hour of 10 in the morning. Down in Captain Bell’s office in the tax department the clock made such a record for itself as a liar and a chate that the captain had to hang a paper over the dial. He said he was ashamed to have an honest man look the clock in the face. An’ so it was all around the buildin’. The clock winder wuz doin’ the windin’ by conthract, an’ he near went plumb crazy. But now thim clocks is all right, fur a wonder. But I wisht I had the wurrud that tells what happened. Here comes Captain[Pg 218] Davis, of the armory board. He knows the wurrud that fits thim clocks when they all got together.”

Captain Davis was held up by Mike, who explained what he wanted.

“An’ I’ll buy a perfecto cigar-r-r if ye’ll give me the wurrud that fits thim clocks.”

“I guess you mean the clocks have at last been synchronized,” said the captain, politely.

“That’s it—that’s it—that’s the wurrud!” shouted Mike. “Thim clocks has been syn—syn—syn”—

Mike paused and the joy died out of his eyes.

“Say, captain,” said he, “phwat the divil is the rest of it?”

“Synchronized,” repeated the captain.

“Yes, that’s it, whativer it is,” said Mike.

The adventures of a trained elephant that escaped in the streets of New York furnished a reporter on the Sun with an opportunity for a humorous animal story that he took every advantage of, as is seen in the following result:

An East Indian elephant weighing a couple of tons or so and bearing the Anglo-Saxon name of Nellie, moved into the tenement house at 336 East Thirty-fourth street early yesterday morning carrying her trunk with her. At or about the same hour most of the other tenants of the house moved out. Shortly afterward the tenants of the house at 338 followed suit, and it was only a few moments later that the tenants in 340 emulated the example of their neighbors in 336 and 338.

Andrew Diehl, the owner of the tenement, did not welcome Nellie with any enthusiasm. He said later that he did not cater to elephants, and anyhow all the flats in his house were occupied. He seemed a bit peevish about the whole affair, apparently having conceived the idea that if it got around the neighborhood that he made a practice of entertaining elephants unawares it might prejudice his house in the eyes of prospective tenants.

[Pg 219]

In short, he spoke quite sharply about the matter, did Mr. Andrew Diehl. But several thousand persons who saw Nellie moving in at 336 appeared to be having a really good time.

Before Nellie moved into 336, and thence through the backyard fence into 338, and thence through another backyard fence into 340, her place of residence was quite a number of blocks further uptown. But she is hard to suit with regard to her surroundings. In fact, before she consented to move into 336, 338 and 340 she insisted on making a number of extensive alterations.

Nellie’s uptown residence was the Hippodrome. She wasn’t exactly an old resident there either, the janitor says, for she moved in there no longer ago than Friday morning, coming directly from the steamship Georgic on the recommendation of a travelling companion, one Alfredo Rossi, who told her that it was a good place to live and that he thought that between them they could do themselves some good there in the way of making a living. This sounded pretty good to Nellie, and as soon as they had hoisted her out of the Georgic’s hold in an enormous sling and deposited her on the island of Manhattan, she started directly for the Hippodrome on Prof. Rossi’s recommendation. Besides, Prof. Rossi had a good sharp goad and some disposition to use it.

In addition to Prof. Rossi, Nellie’s companions of the voyage included three more elephants, Petie, Rosa and Pierrette. Prof. Rossi having some influence with them too, they also went along to board with Nellie at the Hippodrome. The new tenants behaved themselves so admirably at first that the neighbors had no complaints whatsoever to make.

Prof. Rossi came around very early yesterday morning to put the elephants through a little drill preparatory to going into the performance regularly to-morrow afternoon. All would have continued well had Nellie been accustomed to having pigs in the house. But such was not the case. At least the Hippodrome janitor says so. He blames it all on Marcelline’s pig, though he declares that no other tenants of his apartment house ever have complained about the pig.

But Nellie was clearly of the opinion that a pig was out of place in the same house with herself. At all events when she heard that pig squeal and saw him come romping in his usual debonair manner over the stage, she gave one wild blast of her trumpet and determined to go elsewhere. In fact she[Pg 220] went elsewhere, did Nellie, and that forthwith. But she went out, as a perfect lady should, by the customary stage entrance, taking most of it with her and subsequently accumulating large portions of the storm door as well.

Once in Forty-third street Nellie turned toward the east. She was closely pursued by Bill Milligan, a Hippodrome groom, who endeavored with the aid of a shovel to dissuade her from her intention to travel. Mr. Milligan was subsequently reproached severely by Prof. Rossi because he did not use a goad. But Mr. Milligan rejoined with some asperity that he was shaving at the time Nellie tiptoed past him and it was only by the merest chance that he happened to notice her. “And,” added Mr. Milligan, “I don’t use no goad to shave with, anyhow.”

Putting this aside for the moment, the fact remains that Nellie proceeded eastward as far as Fifth avenue. Here she turned to the south. As she approached Forty-second street Traffic Policeman John Finnerty raised one commanding hand, thereby stopping all traffic that had been previously headed in Nellie’s direction. But Policeman Finnerty complains that Nellie did not obey his order to stop. He says he can prove it, too, because there were a number of persons around and several of them in all probability noticed the elephant and can swear that she did not stop when he raised his hand. For a moment, he says, he thought of arresting her, but abandoned the idea, thinking perhaps it would be making too much of a trifling infraction of the traffic rules by a stranger in the city.

At all events Nellie turned to the eastward again when she reached Forty-second street and moved along as far as Second avenue without meeting a soul she knew. In fact she didn’t meet so very many persons face to face, though there were quite a number of people in the lobby of the Manhattan Hotel and the Grand Central Station, and a little group now and then shinning up a casual lamp post or roosting on the top of a subway pagoda. And there weren’t more than 10,000 or 20,000 behind her either.

It looked so lonesome in Forty-second street that Nellie turned southward again when she got to Second avenue out of sheer yearning for human companionship. As a matter of fact there were several persons in Second avenue until a few seconds after Nellie turned the corner, but they all seemed to be in some haste and went away from there before Nellie[Pg 221] could come up to them. In fact Second avenue was so solitary a place that when Nellie got to Thirty-fourth street she thought she would try that just for luck.

She would probably have continued right on to the ferry because nobody thereabouts appeared to have any objection, had it not been for the fact that a fire engine and hose cart galloped through First avenue to answer an alarm turned in from the box at First avenue and Thirty-second street. Nellie was not interested in fire engines. So she took to the sidewalk in front of 334, and at 336 she seemed to say to herself: “This is the place I’ve been looking for.”

At all events she entered the doorway at that number. On the ground floor is Henry Gruner’s barber shop. Henry was shaving a customer when Nellie passed his window and turned into the hall next door. The customer left the chair so promptly that he nearly got his throat cut and disappeared down the street with the towel still about his neck, in the direction of the East River. Nellie walked right through the narrow hall, taking with her a segment of the balustrade. The door that leads into the back yard was not built to accommodate elephants, as Mr. Diehl explained some time later, but Nellie managed to wiggle through it, though she knocked down about half the coping in the process.

High board fences separate 336 from 338, and 338 from 340. That is to say, they did. They don’t now, because Nellie walked through them as if they had been paper. But before this she took a look in at the kitchen window on the ground floor of 336, where Mrs. Gruner, the barber’s wife, and their children, Tessie, Henry and Louisa, were eating breakfast. The happy family looked up from their oatmeal and beheld an uncommon face at the window, the face of an elephant seeking companionship.

Mrs. Gruner and all the little Gruners experienced spots before the eyes and a sudden loss of appetite. In fact, they beat it for the street. It was then that Nellie, again abandoned, moved into 338. There was nobody there either, except up above on the fire escape. So she moved through the fence into 340. Every one had gone away from there too. It was then that the elephant broke down and wept. At least, she lifted up her trunk and trumpeted to the high heavens.

Meantime Prof. Rossi and his staff of assistants had been trailing the wandering Nellie. She was never out of their sight, but they never could quite catch up with her because[Pg 222] there were so many people in the streets who had important engagements and were trying their best to fill them. But by the time Nellie had moved into 340 Rossi and his force had arrived. There were also the police reserves from three stations, several fire companies with hooks and ladders, a squad of mounted cops, the entire force from the Grand Central Station, and enough mere spectators to do credit to a Chicago-New York baseball game at the Polo Grounds.

Vainly did Prof. Rossi endeavor to coax Nellie out by the way in which she had made entrance. Nothing would budge her, and if, as might well have been the case, the courtyard had been entirely surrounded by houses, it might have been necessary to pull one of them down to get her out. Fortunately, however, there’s a vacant lot behind 340, but it was needful to break down two high board fences from the Thirty-third street side in order to get at her.

In the meantime Rossi’s assistants had thoughtfully led the other three elephants, Petie, Rosa and Pierrette, down from the Hippodrome and lined them up in Thirty-third street, and when Nellie looked through the broken fences and saw her merry companions, she let out trumpet peals of delight and all but fell on their necks. So they marched her out into Thirty-third street and back to the Hippodrome without further incident of note. And considering the pains she took to get into her Thirty-fourth street tenement she left it with extraordinarily little apparent regret.

When Prof. Rossi was asked last evening how he accounted for Nellie’s performance, he replied in part:

“Name of a name! Name of a dog! Name of a pig! Sacred thousand thunders! Holy blue!”

In the separation of an old colored couple a reporter might see little to record in a news story, but, with an appreciation of the human interest in the event or with insight into the lives and feelings of the persons concerned, he might write a pathetic story like the following one adapted from the Pittsburgh Gazette Times:

They had climbed the hill together; well on the tottering way down they decided that they must travel the rest apart. Sylvester and Eva Hawkins signed papers to that effect yesterday. They are black folk, these two, old and black, but[Pg 223] they have in their natures a meed of proper sentiment. When the parting came they both wept and the tears were not maudlin.

They have lived for the most part as good citizens should; they reared a family that numbers even more than the Rooseveltian figure; they saved their little earnings until they had their modest home in addition to having given their children better than they had themselves.

But the husband and father, it was alleged, was cruel. It is not denied even by himself that Sylvester was wont to give way to outbreaks of temper. He always was sorry afterward, but sometimes regret did not make up for the harm done. It is charged that once he almost killed his son and only last Saturday choked his daughter nearly to insensibility. This last act was the cause of the son’s making the information against the old man. A preliminary hearing was held last Tuesday and the old man was committed to jail until yesterday.

The son, Sylvanus, wanted his father committed to jail for a term, but the mother would not agree to this. She admitted that she feared her husband when he became violent and that his abuse of her and her children had become unbearable. But she said she still loved him and she did not want him behind the bars. When a bill of separation was suggested she agreed.

Hawkins wept then, as did his wife. He begged to be given another chance, but between her sobs the woman said he had promised to reform so often, all to no effect, that she could trust him no longer. She thought it best for all that they should part.

“I love you still, honey,” the old man murmured, and to show his statement true, he bravely agreed to sign over their little property to her. She bade him a tender good-bye.

The old man walked out alone, over the steps of the municipal building, where he sat down. He saw the family that had renounced him come up, watched them as they took a car, and looked longingly as it rolled away. Then he wiped his eyes again, put his head between his hands and stared vacantly at the ground.

Special Articles. The second type of feature story, that prepared for the magazine sections of Saturday and Sunday editions or for the editorial pages of any issue, usually consists either of a detailed narrative or of an exposition of some interesting and timely subject. In the news columns there is room for only concise announcements of such events as a scientific discovery, an important invention, the destruction of a landmark, the death of an old actor, a new design for coins or postage stamps, an auction of rare books or paintings, a new theory of the origin of life, the results of an investigation of child labor conditions, a report on decreasing soil fertility, or the adoption by a state of a plan for government life insurance. Any one of these and thousands of other news stories whets the reader’s curiosity for more details. It remains for the editors of magazine sections to try to satisfy their readers’ curiosity and to supply interesting reading matter, by publishing feature articles that are based on these news stories or are suggested by them. Feature stories may also be given timeliness, not by particular pieces of news, but by such events as Christmas, college commencements, the exodus to summer resorts, the opening of the hunting or fishing season, the beginning of a session of Congress. Timeliness, although not absolutely essential if the subject or the treatment has sufficient interest to attract readers, is regarded by editors as an important asset.

These special articles for newspapers are written by regular reporters, by “free lance” writers not connected with any publication, or by men and women in other professions whose special knowledge and whose ability to write make them particularly well equipped to prepare articles on subjects in their own fields. Former newspaper writers, as well as reporters and correspondents in active service, are qualified to do good work of this type because their training has developed a keen appreciation of what is interesting, important, and timely in current events. Reporters and correspondents also have ample opportunity in the course of their daily round of news gathering to get valuable material which may be worked up into special articles. Editors of magazine sections often suggest or assign subjects to reporters, correspondents, or “free lance” writers, but they are glad to have suggestions from members of the staff or to get well-written articles suitable for their purpose.

Subjects for Feature Articles. Material for special articles is obtained in a variety of ways. Interviews with persons who can furnish the desired information are an effective means of getting facts and impressions, and they have the advantage of giving the reporter material for the “human interest” element which not infrequently adds to the readableness of the article. From books of reference can be gleaned historical and biographical data. Reports and official documents, such as government publications, can frequently be used to secure detailed information. In fact, printed reports of such government work as that of agricultural experiment stations, divisions of the department of agriculture, various testing laboratories, the geological survey, the departments of commerce and labor, or the interstate commerce commission, and reports of corresponding work carried on by various cities and states, furnish quantities of valuable data that need only to be presented in popular form to be of general interest. Some of these reports are summarized briefly in news stories; others receive no mention at all. Although they are called public documents, the general public does not know of their existence. Personal observation also furnishes material for feature stories. An assignment that takes the reporter to the state penitentiary may at the same time give him the opportunity to get facts and impressions for a special article on some phase of prison life. Statistics, if not too numerous and if skillfully handled, add to the effectiveness of the presentation. Photographs and other forms of illustration make an article attractive. In short, every available source of information can at different times be used to advantage, and often a single article requires interviews, books of reference, personal observation, and printed documents to make it complete and accurate.

Some examples of different kinds of feature articles and their sources will suggest how to find subjects and what to do with them. A reporter whose regular work takes him daily to the mayor’s office may get from the mayor’s secretary some of the hundreds of letters containing complaints and requests for assistance that are sent to the mayor constantly, and may make them the basis of a good feature story. Or, if the mayor writes characteristic replies to these letters, he may secure these answers and make an article out of them, as did a magazine writer recently out of those of Mayor Gaynor of New York. From the reports that he hears from day to day of the devious devices used by burglars and sneak thieves to gain entrance to homes, a police reporter may write an interesting article on how to protect homes against robbery. A sign, “Canaries and Parrots Boarded Here,” may give a reporter a suggestion that he can follow up by visiting the birds’ boarding-house and getting material for an article on those who leave their pets at this house during their absence from the city. From the real estate column a news story to the effect that an old building is to be torn down may suggest a feature story on this landmark and its history, the material being obtained partly from local histories and partly from interviews with “old inhabitants.” A brief announcement of the death of an old-time circus clown might lead the reporter to write an entertaining “human interest” story of his career from facts secured from the clown’s friends. By spending a few hours watching the building of a big tunnel under a river, and by talking to the superintendent and the workmen, a reporter could work up a good story on the undertaking.

The popularizing of scientific and technical material affords excellent opportunity to a writer whose college training or practical experience has familiarized him with special fields. A new theory in regard to the construction of airships presented before a learned society in a paper on “Some Principles of Aerodynamics,” might make an excellent popular article if the reporter were able to present the new idea in a simple, concrete, and interesting manner. The effect of using up the phosphorus in soil under cultivation, as discussed in an agricultural experiment station report, may seem to be a subject of little interest to the average reader, but an explanation by specific examples of the results of this exhaustion of phosphorus upon the cost of living and upon the welfare of the race, may be made a readable story. To explain clearly how the transmission of the germ of infantile paralysis by means of the ordinary house fly is being determined by laboratory experiments, requires knowledge of bacteriology. For a writer familiar with electricity and its application in the telephone, the problem of explaining in an interesting manner a new device for wireless telephony is less difficult than for one who knows little about the subject. Many writers specialize in the particular field in which they are most interested, and present in popular form all the available new material in this field.

To those interested in social, political, and economic problems there is an abundance of good material for feature articles. A report of the interstate commerce commission on railroad accidents or on safety devices can be worked up into a good article at the time that the report is issued or after a disastrous wreck, when such information has peculiar timeliness. Proposed legislation for state life insurance, mothers’ pensions, workingmen’s compensation for accidents and illness, or old age pensions, gives opportunity for timely articles with concrete examples of the workings of these measures elsewhere and discussion of their probable effects under local conditions. A story of child labor in certain industries as reported by a social worker at a legislative investigation, may be followed up by a feature story with a strong “human interest” element developed from further material secured from the investigator. The printed report of a committee of a state teachers’ association on rural schools and the remedies proposed for their defects, has possibilities for an article on these problems.

The Personality Sketch. The personality sketch, or article that undertakes to present a vivid impression of the character and individuality of some person who plays a part in the news of the day, is another type of feature story that is popular. The interest of most readers in the human, personal side of famous or infamous characters in current events is so great that they eagerly read articles of this kind. Dates and facts of biography have little attraction for them; they want the man to be portrayed so vividly that they can see and know him. Not infrequently it is an unusual, quaint, picturesque character who has not appeared in the current news at all that lends himself to such a sketch. Every city furnishes plenty of examples of persons who make good subjects for feature stories. Incidents, anecdotes, and characteristic utterances, if well chosen and effectively presented, make the best reading and give the most definite impression of personality.

The Style of Special Articles. The style and manner of treatment of the feature story deserve careful consideration. Simple, concrete expression, free from technical or learned terms except when they are fully explained, is always desirable. Specific examples serve most effectively to bring home to the reader a general principle and its application. To lead from these concrete illustrations to generalizations is to follow the natural order of inductive reasoning. Furthermore, the story-like character given to an article by an incident or anecdote at the beginning catches the reader’s attention and interests him at once. Striking statistics in the opening sentence may have a similar effect, although, of course, they lack the “human interest” of the story form. A vivid bit of description is sometimes used to advantage at the beginning. Exposition by narrative methods throughout the article is popular because of the story form thus given to the subject. If, instead of merely describing and explaining a mechanical process, the writer portrays men actually performing the work involved in the process, he adds greatly to the interest of the article. The effectiveness of an explanation of a new surgical operation can be increased to a marked degree by picturing a surgeon as he performs the operation upon a patient at a clinic. The method of procedure and the benefits under a workingmen’s compensation act are best made clear by telling the experiences of several typical workingmen and their families who have come under the operation of the law. Every legitimate literary device for catching and holding the reader’s attention may be employed to advantage.

How a current event, in this instance the opening of a trial, gives opportunity for an interesting feature article explaining the situation, picturing vividly the persons involved, and developing the “human interest” element in the case, is well illustrated in the following story written by a correspondent of the New York Tribune:

Union City, Tenn., Dec. 13.—Clad in rough homespun, with ragged trousers tucked deep into cowskin boots innocent of polish, with straggling beards and huge slouch hats, but always with the inevitable long barrelled rifle or big pistol in plain view, the denizens of the Reelfoot Lake region are assembling in this quaint little town to-night for the opening scene to-morrow of the Night Rider trials.

They are friends and relatives of the men who are held under military guard at the barracks. They ignore the townspeople, or look at them with scowls. When they meet one another a silent nod or a whispered word is all that passes. Silently and singly they wander through the streets, or stand for hours outside the barracks, gazing curiously up at the windows of the room in which their friends are held incommunicado. Sometimes they approach the trim young sentries on guard, taking careful inventory of the glistening bayonets and rifles.

They feel keenly this trouble, these rough but simple men of the Tennessee backwoods. They believe that they are persecuted and that the entire world is against them. “Old Tom” Johnson, who, the state says, was the first leader of the band, but was deposed because his immense stature and huge hand easily identified him, expresses the belief of most of them when he says:

“It’s like this heah, stranger. God, He put them red hills up theah. An’ He put some of us pooh folks, that he didn’t have no room foh nowheah else, up theah, too. An’ then He saw that we couldn’t make a livin’ farmin’, so He ordered an earthquake, an’ the earthquake left a big hole. Next He filled the hole with watah an’ put fish in it. Then He knew we could make a livin’ between farmin’ and fishin’. But[Pg 231] along comes these rich men who don’t have to make no livin’, an’ they tell us all that we must not fish in the lake any mo’, ’cause they owns the lake an’ the fish God put theah foh us. It jus’ nachally ain’t right, stranger; it ain’t no justice.”

This is the Night Riders’ original view, but the primary object of the band was forgotten by many, officers say, and the organization began to use its persuasion to vent the personal spites of members and to regulate private affairs of many persons for miles around.

For instance, merchants whose total sales did not exceed $2 a day were ordered to sell goods at cost, plus 10 per cent profit; tenants of farms were ordered to pay no cash rent, but to insist on working the ground on shares; growers of grain or tobacco were ordered to plant only so many acres of soil; landlords were bidden by advertisement not to lease their property for cash rents. A woman who had left her drunken husband was ordered to return to him, and when she refused she was taken to the woods, stripped, tied to a tree and lashed with a cat-o’-ninetails until her back and shoulders were one big wound. Other women, fond of pretty clothing, were told to cease wearing it. And every case of refusal to comply instantly was followed by a visit of the black-masked crew, a swift, violent seizure of the recalcitrant, a rapid ride to the depths of the forest and an awful whipping.

For nearly two years these terrors of the wilderness rode nightly. For two years no man not a member ever retired to rest without breathing a silent prayer that he and his family be spared the terrors of a midnight visitation.

Then the riders extended their operations. They began to visit the larger towns, such as Troy, Dyersburg, Union City. This extension was followed by the murder of Captain Quentin Rankin. Finally the people became enraged, the Governor interfered, and in frenzy many persons said:

“We will stamp out this organization, legally or by mobs, or we will be stamped out by it.”

And so came a special grand jury, instructed by Judge Jones and advised by Attorney General Caldwell. Quickly, too, came the defiance of the Night Riders:

“Dismiss the grand jury, stop the investigation or we will send jury, judge and prosecutor to join Captain Rankin.”

The answer was the numerous arrests of alleged Night Riders by the militia and 125 indictments for capital offences.[Pg 232] For the trials on these indictments, which will open to-morrow, the issue is clearly drawn. It is a struggle between organized lawlessness and the forces of order.

The proposed destruction of an historic landmark recorded in a news story and subsequently made prominent by protests against the action, furnished a reporter on the New York Evening Post with an occasion for the following article, in which he blends suggestive description, emotional coloring, and historical background into an harmonious whole:

Mellow notes from an old organ filled the nave of St. John’s Chapel, on Varick Street, to-day. It was Stainer’s “Nunc Dimittis in A” that the organist was playing. Somehow it seemed peculiarly appropriate, for, as every one knows, they are going to discontinue the work of this chapel, which has stood for more than a hundred years. This means that, unless present plans are abandoned, the stately church will be sold within a very short time, and then razed to make place for factory or office building.

There is little doubt that this will occur, although Trinity Corporation has received numerous protests from those to whom the place of worship has meant much, who still regard it as one of the few links connecting them with things that are gone. The corporation cannot see its way clear to provide for a chapel officially regarded as unnecessary. And yet old St. John’s, with its towering brown spire, its richly colored stones, its heavy columns, and chipped, time-stained façade—a replica of old St. Martin’s in the Fields, of London—stands benignly, bearing its past with a genuine dignity.

The peal of the organ ebbed and flowed over the pews with their faded crimson cushions. In one of them sat the priest in charge, listening, very young; until he talked of the church he loved, he seemed strangely apart from the all-pervading atmosphere of things that were old.

Near by was an earnest woman in the garb of the Episcopal sisterhood, and the under-sexton had paused in his work about the pews. When St. John’s organist is at the keys, the roar of the street is repulsed. The rumble of freight cars, the shouts of the handlers of merchandise, the beat of horses’ hoofs enter but gently, mere suggestions of outer confusion.

[Pg 233]

Inside, to-day, all was harmony and peace. Sunshine flowing through plain glass windows lay athwart the floor of choir and chancel; when the music ceased there came a twittering of birds on the window ledges. Yes, agreed the priest, it was a beautiful old organ. In a few years, he said, it would be a hundred years old. Then he told a story concerning it. He could not vouch for it himself, although he had heard it vouched for by reliable persons.

At the time of the war of 1812, when the church was comparatively new, it had sufficient money in hand for a pipe organ, which was ordered of a company in Philadelphia, and when completed was shipped to New York by water. On the way the vessel which bore it was captured by a British frigate, and the organ was taken to London. Here it remained two years, and was then yielded up after the payment of two thousand dollars. Time has imparted to it a rare tonal richness. It is just the organ for this edifice, so suggestive of things that once were.

Men who know say that you will find such chapel interiors only in the old Sir Christopher Wren churches in London. The cruciform architecture of more modern houses of worship is not here in St. John’s. Lines are sweeping, stately. Heavy fluted columns support the gallery. The windows are of the older sort, unstained, and the walls and ceilings are an even gray, undecorated.

Notes of color are confined to organ pipes and choir stalls, which are red and blue and white, with gilding. But these are not as bright as they once were; neither are the blue-starred arches above chancel and choir.

Years ago, when St. John’s Park was not covered by a freight station, and when many of the “first families” lived hereabouts, the congregations bore comparison with those of any church in the city. But tide of travel made uptown before encroaching commerce, which eventually flowed over the district, converting it utterly.

Congregations which gather here each Sunday are not so fashionable as in years gone. But they are none the less faithful and earnest and devout. You will find ’longshoremen and their families here now—dwellers of the Laight and Vestry and Hudson Street tenements; you will find their children in the Sunday-school. To-day there are nearly, if not quite, 500 communicants in this parish—no indication, it might be thought, that the church has outlived its usefulness.

[Pg 234]

This year, according to a parishioner who should know, this congregation of the lowly contributed $300 to the diocesan mission fund, and that, he asserted, was a better showing comparatively than St. Thomas’s twelve or fifteen thousand dollar contribution. Certainly, as he said, the St. John’s parishioners gave all they could afford, probably more; and since the teachings of the church hold that it is the spirit in giving rather than what is given that counts, St. John’s has no need to be ashamed.

It has been suggested by the Rev. Dr. Manning, rector of Trinity, that St. Luke’s Chapel can adequately attend to the needs of the parishioners of the older chapel. But, as a matter of fact, St. Luke’s is a mile above, and is more a Sunday-school room than a church edifice at best. Those who attend service on Varick Street say that congregations average from two hundred and fifty to three hundred each Sunday morning. The breaking up of a company of worshippers of this size presents a problem in parish economics and ethics that the Trinity Corporation has probably seriously considered in contemplating abandonment of the chapel.

Many houses in the vicinity of the chapel, formerly the abodes of wealthy parishioners, now shelter four and five families. Huge warehouses adjoin each side of the parish property, but there is no impression of crowding. The churchyard is wide. On one side is a playground for children. There are many shade trees here, and bushes which in summer bear flowers, making of the place a beauty spot amid a grimy environment. Directly across the street is the great New York Central freight station, where dummy trains receive and deposit freight. The station site was formerly a private playground, as Gramercy Park is to-day, but those who lived in the houses which surrounded it had begun to move away before the depot was erected in 1868.

St. John’s Park was laid out in order to attract persons to the chapel, which, when built, in 1807, had been spoken of as “too far uptown,” small congregations for the first year or so justifying this contention. As a means of attracting dwellers to the vicinity, the park was planned, and took the name of the chapel. This design succeeded beyond all expectations. Alexander Hamilton and Gen. Schuyler were among the early migrants north of Great Jones Street, and the section soon received the stamp of fashionable approval.

Many of these old dwellings still stand. You may see them[Pg 235] on Hudson Street, on Laight Street, on Vestry Street, with their dormer windows, their fanlight doorways, and high porches, flanked by tall iron posts. In those days, St. John’s vied with Trinity itself, and with St. Paul’s.

In 1839, when Trinity Church, deemed unsafe, was pulled down and work on the present structure was begun, many communicants of that church came to St. John’s, following their great organist, Dr. Hodges, who played here during the seven years occupied in the building of the new Trinity. Organists who followed were devoted to the task of maintaining St. John’s excellent repute in music.

In 1876, long after the environment of this chapel had been given over to commercialism, George F. Le Jeune came to the chapel as organist, and under his ministrations the chapel was famous as a place where the most excellent sacred music in the city was to be heard. Le Jeune it was who introduced the cathedral form of service in this city. In 1877 he instituted a series of musical services which continued at St. John’s for ten years, and served to familiarize the public with a large number of cantatas and oratorios not generally known. Old residents often speak of the music they used to hear at St. John’s, and there is not a Sunday morning that does not find some one of them here, reviving old memories. This is not difficult, because the music at St. John’s is still altogether excellent.

South of the church stands the vine-clad parish house. Here, each Saturday morning, year in and year out, rain or shine, sixty-seven loaves of bread are distributed to the poor women and children of the district, in accordance with provisions of the will of Gen. Leake, a wealthy communicant of the parish, who died in 1792, leaving $5,000 to be put out at interest, the income to be laid out in sixpenny wheaten loaves, to be distributed among the poor. This charity, known as the “Leake Dole of Bread,” has been faithfully observed for more than a century.

Back of the chapel there was a little street called St. John’s Lane, a beautiful tree-shaded bypath in the old days. In the course of years the city advanced, blotting it out of usefulness. Few know it still exists. It is a quiet, deserted, odd little nook of a place, a harbor where shelter may be found from the roar of the city.

By noticing the various odd ways in which some men make a living in New York, a reporter on the Sun secured interesting material for an article which the editor entitled, “Little Wants of a Big City.” A selection from the article follows:

Anybody can be a clerk or a clergyman or a bank president or a teamster. It takes more individuality to strike out in a career like that of the man who works but one week in the year. This man is Santa Claus. His head is covered with a mass of snow-white hair. It falls down over his venerable shoulders and mingles with his equally white beard. The latter falls far down his chest and the old gentleman looks for all the world like the pictures of Santa Claus. Every holiday season he can be found working in some store, posing as the holiday saint, rattling shiny toys before the fascinated gaze of New York’s million children.

Fifty-one weeks in the year he works not at all, and how he subsists and has enough money to buy his little red drinks no man can tell.

The line-up man is a product of New York and of nowhere else. He belongs to a clan of agile, sinewy legged brethren who infest back yards, and his business is to shin up the poles from which are suspended innumerable clotheslines, to fix up frayed out lines, tie on new ropes and get the courtyard rigging into shipshape condition against the Monday wash. He will climb the highest pole in Harlem without the aid of a net and fix your ropes for 25 cents.

“Lady, it is decidedly unsafe to trundle your baby about in that rickety carriage,” is the greeting of the vender of rubber tires for perambulators.

After convincing a startled mother that she has been carelessly subjecting her child to terrible danger from capsizing, the crafty salesman swoops down upon the carriage, tacks on a set of new tires, tinkers up a rickety spoke, slaps a cracked hub together and goes on his way with a merry quarter in his jeans. It’s another odd job.

Take the industrious sellers of keys. They come up to your tenement home, knock at the door and ask whether you need a new key to the chateau. If you have just lost your last key the keyhole genius stoops down, twiddles around with a blank key and some beeswax, files a couple of notches in the blank, and presto—you have a shining new key all for ten cents. A locksmith would take two days and charge you a quarter.

[Pg 237]

Precisely speaking, the man with the camera cannot be included in this list of people who make a living out of curious jobs. Most folks have seen him anchored on a bright corner of a Sunday afternoon taking the pictures of one and all for the small sum of 10 cents.

When you have on your best bib and tucker you strike a dignified pose, with your smaller sister leaning against you, and in two jerks of a lamb’s tail your likeness is slipped upon the post card, which is kept forever after in the family album, where in years to come you gaze upon it and wonder how two such spindly legs supported such a large child.

The man with the telescope doesn’t make a handsome income, and he usually looks unhappy and ill at ease, but for a nickel he will show you the ridges in the moon and the canals on Mars, and if the bulbous top piece of the Metropolitan tower gets in the way it’s your own fault and your nickel is lost.

Next comes what is in reality a woman’s calling, but strangely enough it is followed by a large man with an extremely red face and a stubby mustache. Children must like him because his business is checking them while bargain seeking mammas thread their ways through the aisles of stores.

He stands at the head of a line of baby carriages, soothing his round faced charges and waving a tinkling strapful of ragged edged checks. Upon delivery to him of the check which he gave you when you entered the store you may receive again your baby. No check, no baby, just as in the Chink’s place.

You mightn’t think that a man could eke out an existence selling catnip. One does, though. He stands at an uptown corner with a basketful of cat’s delight, selling it for two cents a bunch, and the old maids in the vicinity make daily trips to his corner. When you’re inclined to growl about your present salary, think of the man selling catnip for two cents a bunch.

Here’s another funny occupation. A man goes around through the sweatshop district mending shoes. If you are a sweatshop employee you generally have one pair of shoes, and of necessity they are on your feet. You can’t leave them with the cobbler when the roof springs a leak or the uppers secede from the lowers. You haven’t time to sit around his shop in your stockings.

[Pg 238]

So this itinerant cobbler hunts you up at your shop, takes off your shoes while you sew and caulks up the seams, tacks on soles and heels, and you pay him with a cheerful smile and some small change.

People who go downtown at night rarely miss seeing the man who advertises various things through an electric sign on his chest. He presses a button at intervals and a light flashes urging you to buy a cigar or a stick of gum or something else. The right thing to say, because everyone says it upon passing this individual, is, “That’s a fine thing for a grown man to be doing.”

Down the bay there is another industry most people never hear of. Enterprising venders owning their own boats meet incoming tramp freighters and sell the crews everything from a pair of mittens to a cough cure. They load their craft with most things you find in a department store and they drive fine bargains with the sailors.

Among the newly arrived immigrants a number of men manage to scrape a living by selling first lessons in English to the strangers struggling with the tongue. These lessons are in the form of simple English sentences followed by the translation in the tongue of the foreigner. Five cents will buy enough assorted conversation to last a new immigrant several weeks.

When in the course of his regular work the reporter comes upon a picturesque bit of local color, as did a writer on the New York Evening Post in going through the Italian quarter of that city, he may use it to as good advantage as the Post reporter did in the following feature story:

Under the tinsel, gilt, and colored paper shrine erected before a café in Mulberry Street, just north of the Bend, there is a picture of St. Mary of the Virgin Mount, and the devout who pass by drop their mites into the plates. The clinking of pennies, nickels, and quarters rings fair and true through the medley of sounds which rise from the crowds about the push-carts, and it is music to the ear of Michel Siniscalchi, giver of this year’s festa in honor of the saint.

A year ago they gave a festa in honor of Maria SS. di Monte Vergine, as the placards and lithographs displayed in[Pg 239] the shop windows style her, and it proved a financial failure. It costs money to give a festa—that is to say, a festa of the style and extent which are necessary in doing adequate honor to this saint. In Italy, in the villages from which the people who live about the Bend come, it is customary to have a festa in honor of the saint every year. And it seemed hard when the people who got up last year’s festa decided that they did not again wish to have to shoulder the burden of the festa’s bad debts.

At this time, when everybody else had backed down, Michel Siniscalchi, who deals in colored glass bulbs and similar decorations, stepped to the fore. He said it seemed a shame that they could not honor the saint. Indeed he was so pained by the thought that he would be willing to bear the expenses of the festa himself. He would, of course, furnish all the decorations himself, and his name would appear as president of the comitato on the banners and placards.

This offer was accepted with glee by the men and more especially by the women, who would have taken to heart the loss of a chance to honor their saint. And Michel Siniscalchi set to work to organize his festa. It was, by the way, part of the agreement, that the offerings placed in the saint’s shrine should go to help Siniscalchi.

Colored lights were strung in arches over the narrow street at frequent intervals, banners and yards of bunting draped the house windows, the confetti men and peddlers of fruit and sweetmeats came from blocks around, and on Saturday night the festa opened with much braying of music and no little religious devotion.

The most important decoration was the shrine of the saint’s picture. In a niche of the shrine the picture was placed, and rows of candles were set before it and the tasseled cloth of gold on which it rests. Then there were the plates and certain lithographic reproductions of the picture.

Since Saturday night the festa has held full sway. There is a preliminary celebration in the morning, and then everybody stops until two o’clock in the afternoon. For a brief spell around dinner time, every one but the band rests, and after dinner the people turn out to listen to the music and to gossip. It is a great occasion for gossip, the festa.

At present everybody is talking about the amount of money Michel Siniscalchi may lose by his speculations. The old men sit before the banca across the street from the shrine and[Pg 240] chuckle over his discomfiture, for, while yesterday and Saturday night the coins clinked in the dishes with merry rapidity, now they barely dribble, and, when a clink is heard, by its very novelty it strikes through all other noises.

“Caught,” they chuckle. “Yes, our Michel is caught this time. A cute one, he is. Yes, a cute one, Signor. No, not a politician. But cute, so cute. Ay, and this time he has been caught. Has the signor heard? The signor has but to cross the street and examine the blessed saint’s shrine. ’Tis bare, Signor. Nought but pennies.”

But there are others who are not so sure that Michel Siniscalchi is going to lose by his speculation. Among the younger generation of Italians his scheme is treated with considerable respect, and his Bowery friends wink when Michel’s intelligence is aspersed.

“Lose?” queried Jack Gallagher, sitting with a group of friends in the café behind the shrine. “Lose, did you say? Aw, g’wan. Say, Michel wasn’t born yesterday. He’s got his brains in his head. He’s too rapid for dese wops. Michel’s got a business eye, he has. He’s thinking of advertisin’. See that sign up there? See Michel’s name on it, good and big? See them lights? All from Michel’s store. Aw, he’s a wise guy. He knows his game.”

While Gallagher talked, the infrequent pennies, with an occasional nickel, dropped into the plates, and presently the figure was carried toward Spring Street, with at least 150 women and children and a band in the procession.

Simplicity and naturalness may be given to an explanatory article by putting it in the form of an interview with the person from whom the information is obtained; this was done in the following story from the New York Sun:

“For the last three years I have devoted my summer to making balanced aquariums to order,” said a woman who is now in middle life. “I earn enough by this work to keep me comfortably during the winter, so I call myself a successful woman wage earner.

“I make my aquariums as nearly a perfect reproduction of natural conditions as possible. It is only since the discovery of balanced aquariums that the full decorative effect[Pg 241] of displays of aquatic life has begun to be realized. Now many architects and interior decorators include them in their plans. This is true not only of country places but of many of the newest city homes. Certainly there is no easier and cheaper way to keep some living thing about the house. The care of the balanced aquarium amounts to so little that it may be practically disregarded.

“The cost of the vessel depends entirely upon the wishes of the person who is filling it. It may be an ordinary fruit jar with a wide mouth or a glass tank costing $20 or more. The simplest tanks cost about $1 and are of something more than one gallon capacity. They may be had either rectangular in shape or globular. For an eight gallon tank of domestic glass I have paid as little as $2.50. The main essential is to have a tank perfectly tight and clean, with no paint or other injurious material to contaminate the water.

“To begin with, the water should be as pure as the water we drink. The bottom should be covered with pebbles and sand to the depth of two inches with the plants rooted in it. There is a great variety of aquatic plants that may be had at a cost of from 10 cents to half a dollar a bunch. Of them all fanwort is the most valuable. Hornwort, water starwort, tape grass, water poppy, willow moss, milfoil and a number of floating plants such as lemma, duckweed, salvinia, hydrocharis and hyacinth are among the most important varieties. If one has lived long enough on any water course in the country to know these plants, taking them from their native soil and transplanting them to the sand of the aquarium is a simple matter.

“The most important occupants of the aquarium are the fish, and great care should be taken not to put in too many for the size of the tank. The basis of the balanced aquarium is one fish, say three inches in length, to each gallon of water. If your tank holds five gallons of water you could not make a well balanced aquarium by putting ten fish three inches long in it. If the fish are smaller the number to the gallon can be very greatly increased.

“Gold fish or golden carp are the most popular stock for an aquarium, and the common varieties can be had for ten cents each. This price means the best fish of these varieties. If there is more money to be spent I would advise purchasing some of the really marvellously colored Japanese varieties.

[Pg 242]

“These fish have wonderful flowing tails with colors that change as though by magic from week to week. In the case of the variety known as the telescope fish the color to begin with is velvety black and gradually becomes silvery, then white, and after three years a wonderful orange red. Nearly all varieties of goldfish are constantly changing their colors, which range from black to silver and many shades of amber and golden red.

“There is an almost endless variety of these beautiful Japanese fish to choose from, the more common of which include the fantails, fringetails and comets. Good specimens of these varieties may be bought at from 25 cents to $5 each. The bulgy eyed telescope fish, the aristocrats of the aquarium world, will cost from $5 apiece up, according to size, color, shape and eyes.

“In addition to the Japanese fish there are many other rare varieties suited to balanced aquariums. Among the most popular are the banded tench, the banded sunfish, the paradise fish, the bitterling and the golden tench. Besides these I have orders for many varieties of our own native waters.

“Such orders usually come to me singly, and the one giving the order is quite willing to pay the cost of having his taste suited. These people, usually men, want an aquarium with the fish of their boyhood days. They candidly admit that they wish them as reminders of the happy days long past.

“Where native fish are wanted I usually use sunfish, dace, catfish, minnows, sticklebacks, chub, mirror carp, rockfish, small eels, alligators, newts, frogs and turtles of all sizes and shapes and colors. I always when possible have a snail, tadpole or a few newts in my aquariums, as they are scavengers and will consume much of the decaying matter thrown off by the plants, besides preventing the green scum that will form in still bodies of water.

“Beginners must be particular not to mix their fish indiscriminately. They must always remember that goldfish cannot live in peace with catfish, sunfish, eels, turtles, crawfish, rockfish or sticklebacks. If this rule is not observed, the goldfish will eventually lose the battle for life and be killed.

“Goldfish if properly cared for live to a great age. There is an aquarium in Washington where the goldfish are known to be more than fifty years old.

[Pg 243]

“Balanced salt water aquariums are as easily made and kept as those of fresh water. Of course they must be filled with sea water fresh from the sea and all the inhabitants must be the young of various sea creatures, such as crabs, starfish, shrimps, and anemones. The plant life also must be the varieties that flourish in the sea, and where possible I believe in taking the pebbles and sand from a sea washed beach.

“Beginners must be careful about two points. First, in making aquariums they must not overcrowd them by trying to have too many fish for the volume of water. Second, they must not overfeed their pets. Failure to observe these two rules causes more trouble than all other points connected with the making and care of aquariums.

“In a balanced aquarium the daily care consists in feeding the fish with prepared wafers, dried ants’ eggs, or fish food. Fish should never be fed more than they will eat up clean at the time.

“Fortunately fish are subject to few diseases. The amateur has only to remember that salt water is the cure-all for sick fish. If a fish is out of health and the trouble is caused neither by overcrowding nor by overfeeding, a five minutes bath in salt water every day for a week will in nine cases out of ten restore it to its usual good health and spirits.

“All that is necessary to catch the sick fish is a small net that can be conveniently handled in the aquarium. Though I have been making aquariums of different sorts ever since I was a small country girl, I still use a net and avoid touching the inmates with my hands unless it is positively necessary.

“When I catch my own fish from their native waters I use a small net, very little larger than the one used in the aquariums, and a minnow bucket. These are my only tools.

“I find a ready sale for all the aquariums I have time to make after filling my special orders. Of course there are seasons when the demand is more brisk than others. When those times come I always have a dozen aquariums on hand which I have stocked either for my own satisfaction or to try some new theory.”

The interview form may be combined with a character sketch and biographical material in order to give the reader a glimpse of the speaker’s personality as well as an account of his or her work. The selection from the New York Times given below is the first part of a long article which is in the form of an interview after this introduction:

Even when Mrs. Alice Stebbins Wells fishes about in her bag and produces her policeman’s star for verification one can hardly believe that she is the famous first “policewoman” of Los Angeles. Scarcely five feet in height, slender, with a mild, almost timorous voice and a pair of very round blue eyes, Mrs. Wells presents an appearance about as formidable as that of a kitten. Yet she has been permanently appointed as a regular member of the police force of a city of 400,000, subject to the same regulations, vested with the same authority, and under civil service, as any male member of Los Angeles’ bluecoat squad. She makes arrests and prefers charges in the same way and with as much success as any policeman, and is a very substantial vindication of the power of personality in an institution where brute force and a six-foot stature have formerly been thought to be indispensable prerequisites. Here is what she says of a phase of police work:

“And do I carry weapons? No, indeed. That is something which I do not feel called upon to do. I am very firmly convinced that under the right conditions a policeman would not have to carry a weapon at all. But before the policeman can give up his gun and his stick, weapons must not be sold indiscriminately to citizens. The only reason now that a policeman requires a weapon is because the other fellow may have one, and the law must enforce its demands against all objection. It is a very sad commentary on our civilization that guns and brass knuckles are displayed openly for sale, and that almost the only restriction in our most careful communities is a provision for a license, which is easily obtained.”

Mrs. Wells is the first woman to be appointed to a police force in any city of the United States. The woman detective, the police matron, the probation officer, the district nurse, are all places which have been filled by women, and were of course the forerunners of the policewoman. But while they were vested with partial police authority their power was greatly restricted along certain well-defined lines, and they did not work in recognized co-operation with the police department.

Before entering her work on the Los Angeles police force Mrs. Wells had been in active training as a social worker. The general attitude which she takes toward that stratum of[Pg 245] society with which she comes most in contact is hinted at in her adaptation of the philanthropist’s, the cheery social worker’s, vocabulary. Mrs. Wells never resorts to the threadbare term of “uplift,” but puts in its place that rather more welcome “upbuilding.”

Returning to California from social work in the East, Mrs. Wells entered upon a scientific study of crime. She became impressed with the importance of the police department in its capacity to prevent crime as well as to punish it, and was convinced of the need of women workers on the inside of the police department to strengthen the emphasis on the side of prevention. She set to work to obtain signatures to a petition for a woman police officer, which resulted very promptly in her appointment to the police force of Los Angeles, where she has been at work for the last three years.

In addition to her regular police duties, Mrs. Wells conducts a bureau of information to which clubs and civic organizations which are working to obtain women on the police force of their home cities may apply. She is now on a six months’ leave of absence, not only to investigate conditions throughout the country, but to carry on her “campaign” for women police. She is speaking before city clubs and organizations of every sort, and is visiting the mayor and chief of police in every city.

“I have spoken all the way across the continent and I shall speak all the way back. I realize that I am in a way doing propaganda work. When I applied for my appointment in Los Angeles I thought chiefly of the immediate work to be done right there by a woman. But when I was appointed, then came this—this terrifying publicity—and I realized what it meant.

“I realized that I should have to stand behind a sort of ‘movement’ for women in the police departments of other cities, just because I was the first in the field.”

Effective presentation of the life and the character of a man who has “done things” is illustrated by the following “personality sketch” by Mr. Brand Whitlock, published in the American Magazine, but equally well adapted for newspaper publication:

Those citizens of Ohio who a dozen years ago used to throng the big circus-tent in which Tom L. Johnson was then[Pg 246] making his first campaigns in the country districts will recall the figure of the slender youth with the Grecian profile and the fair hair who used to stand there under the flaring light and speak of fundamental democracy. They, or those of them who were accessible to such impressions, caught something of the spirit of youthful idealism that was in the young man; if they did not, his presence and personality gave them reassurance, for attendance on one of Tom Johnson’s meetings in those days was, in Ohio, an enterprise to impart the thrill of a spicy and dangerous adventure. Time flies, and time has flown fast in this last decade, and the political ideas that Herbert S. Bigelow was helping Tom Johnson to disseminate, though they were flouted and scorned then as heretical, insane, and wicked, have since become, by the inevitable and monotonous operation of the universal law of progress, conventional, respectable, orthodox, and popular.

Herbert Bigelow was then not many years out of Lane Theological Seminary—strange spectacle in Ohio, that of a minister addressing Democratic meetings!—and he was pastor of the Vine Street Congregational Church, in Cincinnati. Vine Street Congregational Church was in itself an instance of the operation of the old law. Before the Civil War it was a hotbed of abolition when abolition was unpopular and unorthodox even in Ohio, though everybody in Ohio is an abolitionist to-day, and, if he is old enough, claims to have been so then. But after the war the Vine Street Church became respectable, with a cold and formal atmosphere of black walnut and musty cushions of a magenta shade, and when Herbert Bigelow began to preach a somewhat too literal application of the social ethics of Jesus, not to Hankow or Kordofan, but to Cincinnati, there was a disconcerting rustle in the pews, the tendency of that doctrine being to decrease the revenues of the church in an inverse ratio to the increase in the number of human beings in the congregation.

It is an interesting story, not to be told here in detail, of how Herbert Bigelow struggled, of how they tried to get him out of his pulpit, and of how he worked for a long time without salary, until Daniel Kiefer devised means of financing the institution, so that it lost its ecclesiastical atmosphere, became a People’s Church or forum for free speech, and moved into a theater where radicals preach their various and conflicting heresies on Sunday afternoons, after moving pictures have illustrated the progress of the species.

[Pg 247]

Meanwhile Herbert Bigelow was increasingly prominent in political reform movement; he lectured everywhere, wrote articles for radical publications, organized the Ohio Direct Legislation League, and poured all his energy into the propaganda of the initiative and referendum. The privileged interests opposed him, of course, and still oppose him. One way they did it was to call him Reverend; whenever it was necessary to frighten “good” people, by holding up his image, they printed the Reverend with the subtle and sinister implication of quotation-marks; whenever it was necessary to influence “bad” people, printing the Reverend without the quotation-marks.

But Herbert Bigelow was an idealist growing day by day more practical. He had had hard knocks in boyhood; he knew what it was to be poor; he had a love of his fellow man; he was saddened and appalled by the shadow of poverty everywhere, the shadow which so many are too blind to see, or too selfish and cowardly to admit. But this spirit of sympathy and of pity in him had been somehow ordered, organized, and made coherent by the philosophy of Henry George, and when that vision came to him, as does nearly every other who has a vision, he went to work for social justice.

His great opportunity came when, last year, a convention was called to draft a new constitution for Ohio, and he set out to impress the people with the fact that it was their opportunity. He organized the Ohio Progressive Constitution League, with subsidiary leagues in every county; he worked all summer; and through that league, aided and inspired by what the lecturers call the Spirit of the Times, a majority of delegates elected to the convention were pledged to the principles of direct legislation.

And for the first half of the year Mr. Bigelow was at Columbus, presiding over the constitutional convention as its president. At forty his figure is no longer slender; it has taken on the rotundity of the middle years; but as he sat there in gray tweeds, with the yellow hair hanging over his forehead, smiling, it must have been gratifying to him now and then to reflect that his old heresies had become so orthodox in his own time. The convention adopted articles providing for home rule for cities, for a license system to control the liquor traffic, for equal suffrage, for verdicts in civil cases by a three-fourths vote of the jury, for the welfare of labor, and, under Mr. Bigelow’s leadership, a clause adopting the initiative[Pg 248] and referendum in the State. When the vote was taken, and Herbert Bigelow had the satisfaction of announcing the triumph of the principle he had so long advocated, it was a moment that all his friends were glad to have him experience. The irony in which the fates usually award their laurels was not wanting in that instance, for in the clause there is a proviso that the initiative and referendum shall not be used by the people to adopt the single tax, supposed, in Ohio, to be a method of despoiling farmers by taxing land according to its superficial area. But Herbert Bigelow, whom fate taught long ago, like Josh Whitcomb, to accommodate himself to circumstances and to take what he can get, smiles and is happy; and his friends are happy with him.

SUGGESTIONS

Find the “human interest” in current events.
Notice the comedy and tragedy in life.
Look for good subjects for character sketches.
Look to future events as well as to current news for subjects for feature articles.
Jot down suggestions for feature articles.
File news clippings, statistics, and other material bearing on good subjects.
Write your feature article while it is new and timely.
Give your article timeliness by connecting it with topics of current interest.
Don’t forget that the story that touches the reader’s heart is the story he remembers.
Make your pathetic story simple and restrained.
Don’t confuse sentiment with sentimentality.
Avoid cheap humor and vulgar slang.
Don’t ridicule another’s religion, race, or nationality.
Make your explanation clear to a reader who knows nothing about the subject.
Use incidents, anecdotes, and concrete examples for clearness and interest.
Avoid technical and scientific terms.
Let your first sentence arouse interest and curiosity.

PRACTICE WORK

1. Write a humorous animal story based on the material in the following news story:

Just because they thought an ostrich was a timid, harmless sort of creature, two men, one white and one black, were badly hurt at Mineola, Long Island, yesterday. Each of the men tried to catch and hold an ostrich at the Mineola Fair Grounds. The negro was kicked in the face, and landed about 20 feet from the bird; the white man was kicked in the chest and knocked down and had his clothes torn off him.

The ostrich that did all the damage is named Fleetwing. He and another ostrich, named Fleetfoot, arrived from Florida in two crates yesterday morning. They were brought to Mineola to race on the fair grounds this week at the fair of the Queens-Nassau County Agricultural Society. The birds have been trained to run races and pull light sulkies to which they are harnessed.

They are bad tempered, however, and are kept blindfolded frequently when they are not racing. A blindfolded ostrich is gentle as a lamb.

The blinding hood slipped off the eyes of Fleetwing at the fair grounds yesterday morning and in an instant the big bird was out of its crate, which was not covered. It started off on a run, and about two hundred persons ran after it. There was a merry chase around and around the racing track, and finally the ostrich was cornered.

A big negro looked at the ostrich and said:

“I reckon there ain’t no chicken ever were raised that I couldn’t hold, boss. I’ll hold his laig, an’ then you grab his haid.”

The negro wrapped his arms about one of Fleetwing’s legs and in a second was lifted into the air and landed about 20 feet away, with an ugly wound in the side of his face. Then Keeper Ford approached the ostrich from the front, and got an uppercut on his diaphragm, cutting his chest and tearing his clothes. Finally the ostrich was roped and recrated.

“That ain’t no chicken,” said the negro as he watched these proceedings from a safe distance. “That there’s a two-laiged mule.”

2. Make a more entertaining “Zoo” story out of the facts in the following article:

The Chinese wildcat in the Central Park Zoo has received a new lease of life, according to the keepers there, and a graphophone may be used now to make life seem more worth while to[Pg 250] him. If this plan is adopted one of the machines will collect sounds in Mott Street that are expected to help to cure the cat’s recurrent fits of nostalgia, which is the dictionary name for homesickness.

There is a box nailed to the wall by the side of the quarters of the lady hippopotamus and her young son, and on a shelf of this lies all day long a slim and long-bodied little animal with green eyes and a sweeping tail. The yellow sign says that it is a “Felis Chinensis.” He may take exercise at night, but all day he is motionless, still, apparently melancholy, noticing nothing.

He is in surroundings that offer little congeniality. The lady hippo and her young son are out of his class. The capybara not only is from South America, but is like a rat magnified some two hundred times. The lions across the aisle are from climes unknown to the Chinese wildcat. Practically everything in the Central Park Zoo has long ago learned how to eat peanuts, and has thus become more or less Americanized. The Felis Chinensis will not have peanuts.

Last week a couple of Chinamen, rare visitors at the Zoo, strayed into the lion house, stopping before the home of the wildcat. The minute he heard their talk he jumped from his shelf and began purring and rubbing himself against the side of his box. He played ball with a chicken bone on the floor, and had a good time. The uplift he got from this rode him along joyously for two days afterward.

And there is a plan on foot, say the keepers, to collect Mott Street sounds in a graphophone for the Felis Chinensis, if more laundrymen don’t visit the Zoo. There is some apprehension, however, as to how the lions and the tiger will take the graphophone.

3. Use the facts in the following clipping as the basis for an amusing hunting story:

A rabbit that residents of Sayville, L. I., declare plays on the piano has taken possession of a big house near Oakland, owned by Alexander H. Hunter. Mr. Hunter and his family are in Europe, and until they return bunny will lord it over parlor and pantry.

The rabbit didn’t go into the house because it wanted to. It was chased there by men with guns and dogs intent on taking its life, and the rabbit, unwilling to yield itself up for stew, bolted into the Hunter house via a drain pipe.

This was the way of it:

Herman Schmidt and a friend went out with dogs and guns yesterday for a hunt, and the hounds soon started the particular Br’er Rabbit who is making faces at the hunters from the front window of the Hunter place. When the dogs got close Br’er Rabbit didn’t hesitate. He laid his ears back and was away like a streak, with dogs and men in hot pursuit.

[Pg 251]

Toward the Hunter home ran the hunted and hunters, and it looked as if Schmidt would have a rabbit stew for supper. But the hunters had not calculated on a drain pipe which stuck out of the ground about 150 yards from the house, and great was their chagrin when cunning Br’er Rabbit whisked into it and disappeared.

Now that pipe leads right into the Hunter house, and pretty soon the hunters saw bunny at one of the windows. When they approached he retreated to the piano and kept running back and forth over the keys, making soft music.

There is no caretaker in the house, and the possibility of the damage that the rabbit will do, for which the hunters may have to pay, is appalling.

On the other hand, the rabbit may have to come out of the house to get something to eat. If he does he will get a warm reception at the end of the drain pipe. A couple of dogs are lurking about there. They tried hard to get into the pipe but they were too wide.

4. Write a pathetic story, using the particulars given in the following narrative:

Dog Catcher Larson visited the Home for the Friendless with his little blue wagon Thursday afternoon, and he left behind him one hundred little tots with saddened hearts and cheeks that burned with scalding tears.

The bewhiskered dog catcher is no respecter of persons or of dogs. The high and low are the same to him, and he recognizes no distinction between the poodle and the fice. And so Thursday afternoon he gathered in the little pet of the children of the Home of the Friendless.

True, it was the pet of these little unfortunates. True, that they had raised this little dog, and that now it was only seven months old—not old enough to know about Atlanta’s dog law. Still, Jerry had no tag, and tagless Jerry therefore must take his place in the blue wagon and must await his turn to be ducked to death.

The children had no money and so could not pay the dollar for the tag. Now that the dog was arrested, still less did they have the $2.25 necessary to save him from a watery grave.

One and all they went to bed with heavy hearts, and as they knelt down beside their beds they did not forget to put in a word for “Poor Jerry!”

Friday morning the pangs of sorrow were too great, and their grief burst forth in wails. Jerry had been a companion to them, a faithful friend and a source of solace and comfort. He had never deserted them—and then Jerry was theirs, had been fed by them, raised by them, taught by them.

[Pg 252]

They knew it was not their fault he had not been tagged, and also they knew that Jerry was not to blame. And so they appealed to the superintendent. They begged, pleaded, cried. Nothing would suffice but the restoration of their fice.

The superintendent appealed to the mayor, the mayor to the probation officer, and now the probation officer is trying to touch the heart of the dog catcher.

All of the children are writing letters to city officials. “The cook got mad with Jerry,” writes little Ruth Wilson, “because he stole two of Mother Henry’s chickens, but Jerry didn’t mean any harm. Cook gave the dog to the dog catcher. We have got all the cats we want, but only one little dog—and that is Jerry. Please give him back to us, for we love him very much.”

5. With the facts given in the news story below as a basis, write a pathetic feature story.

Moving pictures inspired ten boys to “lynch” Harry Werner, their 9-year-old playmate, in Glencoe yesterday. So serious are his injuries that he may be crippled for life.

It was a “wild west” picture, absurd to the practical mind in its unrealities, that gave the boys their idea.

They saw in the flickering pictures a score of “cowboys,” their revolvers strapped on the wrong side, while they mounted their horses also from the wrong side, and rode with the grace and skill of wooden Indians.

The boys did not notice these details. They saw only the rakishness and swaggering daredeviltry. They applauded vociferously the “stringing-up” of the actor-cowboy.

“Let’s play wild west,” one 10-year-old enthusiast proposed after the show. The vote was unanimous.

Wooden revolvers were fashioned. Fathers’ discarded hats took the place of sombréros. Broom sticks served as prancing bronchos.

“Who’ll we lynch?” one asked. Harry Werner was selected. His dark hair and eyes led to his unwilling selection by them for the rôle of “villain.”

They tied a clothes-line under his arms and threw the rope over a branch of a tree. Whooping madly, in true moving-picture-wild-west fashion, they pulled him up until his feet were far from the ground.

The thin rope cut into his tender flesh. He struggled and implored his comrades to let him down. His pleas brought renewed whoops. Had not the “villain” in the moving-picture struggled and cried for mercy?

For half an hour they kept him there. Then they cut the rope and let his body fall to the ground. Their childish eyes did not see that he was unconscious. They seized the rope and dragged[Pg 253] him for several minutes, leaving him on the ground to find his way home alone.

Physicians who examined him declared that he may be disabled permanently.

6. Rewrite the following humorous story, making it more effective in every way possible.

Tommy is a hero to-day. All his playmates that live on Greene street, near Wolcott avenue, are envious, and speak to him in awed whispers, for did he not go to hunt a Saracen and return covered with bean-juice and glory? All their mothers, too, are keeping a sharp watch on the family crockery.

This is how it happened:

Papa Devine had told Tommy about a lot of men who called themselves Crusaders, who went to lick a lot of other chaps known as Saracens. And when papa told him how the Crusaders wore armor plates on their chests and backs and arms and legs and big helmets on their heads, Tommy decided that he would take a crack at the Saracens himself.

When Papa Devine went out, and Mamma Devine was busy upstairs, Tommy thought it would be a good time to start on his crusade.

Going into the kitchen, he tied a frying pan about his neck so that it hung down over his stomach, strung the lid of the clothes boiler over his back, and then sought a helmet that would resist the swords and battle-axes of the enemy.

As he pondered he sniffed the air. Then a bright idea came. Cautiously he opened the stove door. Mamma Devine was cooking beans à la Boston and Tommy Devine drew forth a big round stone pot full of the delicious fruit. Carefully he emptied the contents into the sink and thrust the pot on his head.

The bean juice ran down into his eyes and ears, but that didn’t matter—he was going to hunt Saracens. Then the pot felt uncomfortable, and Tommy decided to take it off and refit it to his head.

Horrors! The pot would not budge. It was stuck on his head. Pull as he might he could not get it off. He sat down in the corner to plan a campaign of action, and consoled himself with licking the dripping bean treacle from his nose end. That got tiresome after a while, so Tommy sought his mother.

Mrs. Devine scolded over the lost beans at first, and then tried to remove the pot, but she, too, was unsuccessful. Then she became alarmed. In desperation she started for the doctor’s with the pot still on Tommy’s head, the pans jangling around his neck, and the bean juice running down his back.

Passengers in the street car dropped their papers in amazement, for they did not know that Tommy was a crusader, while Mrs.[Pg 254] Devine looked out of the window and tried to make it appear that crusading was an every day affair.

But Tommy’s tears and wails attracted the attention of an old man. He stopped the car and called the motorman, who came with his controller handle in his hand.

“Crack the blamed thing off,” ordered the old man.

The motorman cracked, and off fell the jar. Tommy set up a whoop of joy, and Mrs. Devine hurried home to give the erstwhile crusader a bath—and a spanking.