Clarke never thought well of himself as a reporter, and often said that in that capacity he was a failure. As a judge of news values, or news presentation, or as a giver of the fine literary touch which lent to the Sun’s articles that indescribable tone not found in other papers, Clarke stood almost alone.
The city editor of a New York newspaper sows seeds; the night city editor re-seeds barren spots, waters wilting items, and cuts and bags the harvest. The city editor sends men out all day for news; the night city editor judges what they bring in, and decides what space it shall have. In the handling of a big story, on which five or fifteen reporters may be engaged, the night city editor has to put together as many different writings in such a way that the reader may go smoothly from beginning to end. Chance may decree that the poorest writer has brought in the biggest news, and the man on the desk must supply quality as well as judgment.
At such work Clarke was a master. It has been said of him that by the eliding stroke of his pencil and the insertion of perhaps a single word he could change the commonplace to literature. No reporter ever worked on the Sun but wished, at one time or another, to thank Clarke for saving him from himself. Clarke had the faculty of seeing instantly the opportunity for improvement that the reporter might have seen an hour or a day later.
Clarke got about New York very little, but he knew the city from Arthur Kill to Pelham Bay; knew it just as a general at headquarters knows the terrain on which his troops are fighting, but which he himself has never seen. He had the map of New York in his brain. When an alarm of fire came in from an obscure corner, he knew what lumber-yards or oil-refineries were near the blaze, and whether that was a point where the water pressure was likely to fail.
Clarke’s memory was uncanny; it seemed to have photographed every issue of the Sun for years. It was a saying that while Clarke stayed the Sun needed neither an index nor a “morgue”—that biographical cabinet in which newspapers keep records of men and affairs.
Twenty-five years after the Beecher-Tilton trial a three-line death-notice came to Clarke’s desk. He read the dead man’s name and summoned a reporter.
“This man was a juror in the Beecher case,” said Clarke. “Look in the file of February 6 or 7, 1875, and I think you’ll find that this man stood up and made an interruption. Write a little piece about it.”
A Sun man who reported the funeral of Russell Sage at Lawrence, Long Island, in July, 1906, returned to the office and told Mr. Clarke that an acquaintance of the Sage family had told him, on the train coming back, the contents of the old man’s will—a document for which the reading public eagerly waited. The reporter laid his informant’s card before the night city editor. Clarke studied the name on it for a minute, and then said:
“We won’t print the story. Dig out the file for June, 1899, and somewhere on the front page—I think it will be in the third or fourth column—on the 1st or 2nd of June you’ll find a story telling that this man was sent to Sing Sing for forgery.”
Clarke’s memory was right. Although it is anti-climactic to relate it, the ex-convict’s description of what the will contained was also correct.