Howard dictated to the man at the London wire: “Roberts, London. How is the weather? Howard.”
In less than ten minutes the cable-man handed Howard a typewritten slip reading: “News-Record, New York, Howard: Thermometer 97 our office now. Promises hottest day yet. Roberts.”
“I never before realised how we have destroyed distance,” said Mrs. Carnarvon.
“I don’t think any one but a newspaper editor completely realises it,” Howard answered. “As one sits here night after night, sending messages far and wide and receiving immediate answers, he loses all sense of space. The whole world seems to be in his anteroom.”
“I begin to see fascination in this life of yours.” Marian’s face showed interest to enthusiasm. “This atmosphere tightens one’s nerves. It seems to me that in the next moment I shall hear of some thrilling happening.”
“It’s listening for the first rumour of the ‘about to happen’ that makes newspaper-men so old and yet so young, so worn and yet so eager. Every night, every moment of every night, we are expecting it, hoping for some astounding news which it will test our resources to the utmost to present adequately.”
From the news-room they went up to the composing room—a vast hall of confusion, filled with strange-looking machines and half-dressed men and boys. Some were hurrying about with galleys of type, with large metal frames; some were wheeling tables here and there; scores of men and a few women were seated at the machines. These responded to touches upon their key-boards by going through uncanny internal agitations. Then out from a mysterious somewhere would come a small thin strip of almost hot metal, the width of a newspaper column and marked along one edge with letters printed backwards.
Up through the floor of this room burst boxes filled with “copy.” Boys snatched the scrawled, ragged-looking sheets and tossed them upon a desk. A man seated there cut them into little strips, hanging each strip upon a hook. A line of men filed rapidly past these hooks, snatching each man a single strip and darting away to a machine.
“It is getting late,” said Howard. “The final rush for the first edition is on. They are setting the last ‘copy.’”
“But,” Mrs. Carnarvon asked, “how do they ever get the different parts of the different news-items together straight?”