It was three days before Howard had a chance. On a Sunday afternoon the Assistant City Editor who was in charge of the City Desk for the day sent him up to the Park to write a descriptive story of the crowds. “Try to get a new point of view,” he said, “and let yourself loose. There’s usually plenty of room in Monday’s paper.”
Howard wandered through the Central Park for two hours, struggling for the “new point of view” of the crowds he saw there—these monotonous millions, he thought, lazily drinking at a vast trough of country air in the heart of the city. He planned an article carefully as he dined alone at the Casino. He went down to the office early and wrote diligently—about two thousand words. When he had finished, the Night City Editor told him that he might go as there would be nothing more that night.
He was in the street at seven the next morning. As he walked along with a News-Record, bought at the first news-stand, he searched every page: first, the larger “heads”—such a long story would call for a “big head;” then the smaller “heads”—they may have been crowded and have had to cut it down; then the single-line “heads”—surely they found a “stickful” or so worth printing.
At last he found it. A dozen items in the smallest type, agate, were grouped under the general heading “City Jottings” at the end of an inside column of an inside page. The first of these City Jottings was two lines in length:
“The millions were in the Central Park yesterday, lazily drinking at that vast trough of country air in the heart of the city.”
As he entered the office Howard looked appealingly and apologetically at the boy on guard at the railing and braced himself to receive the sneering frown of the City Editor and to bear the covert smiles of his fellow reporters. But he soon saw that no one had observed his mighty spring for a foothold and his ludicrous miss and fall.
“Had anything in yet?” Kittredge inquired casually, late in the afternoon.
“I wrote a column and a half yesterday and I found two lines among the City Jottings,” replied Howard, reddening but laughing.
“The first story I wrote was cut to three lines but they got a libel suit on it.”