“‘By Jove, Marley, I’ll have to use that. I’ve been wondering how to lead my story to-night.’
“Now you know the strike at our place occurred several days ago, but since then it has been spreading, and to-day the men on another road walked out. This morning when I picked up the Courier and turned to the strike news, here is what I read, under big head-lines:
“‘A short man with a brown derby hat cocked over his eye walked leisurely down Canal Street at ten o’clock yesterday morning. The short man walked a block and then turned and walked back. At the open door of the C. and A.’s big freight house he stopped. Suddenly he whistled, once, twice, thrice, in low notes. Then he raised his hand with a gesture that was graceful and yet commanding, and held up two fingers. Inside the freight house the men who were heaving away at the big bales and boxes, attracted by the whistle, paused in their labor and looked up; they saw the man raise his two fingers; and, with the discipline of well-trained troops, they dropped their trucks, put on their coats and marched out of the freight house. And the Alton had been added to the list of railroads whose men were on strike.’
“Of course, I was surprised and puzzled, and a little pleased too, that I had had a hand in the article. As I read it, though, I thought of a hundred details I might have told Weston, and I began to wish I had written the account myself. This afternoon he came around to the office again, and the first thing he said was:
“‘Did you see your story this morning?’
“I told him I had, of course. ‘But,’ I added, ‘that was the way it happened on our road; not on the Alton.’
“But he only laughed, and said something about the tricks of the trade.
“And now for the news I was going to tell you. I told Weston, as we talked the story over, of my little wish that I had written the article myself, and he looked at me intently for a moment. Then he said:
“‘How’d you like to break into newspaper business?’
“My heart leaped; it came to me suddenly that it wasn’t the law, nor railroad work, but journalism that I wanted to enter. I told him so frankly and he said: