“Then you’re on a paper now?” asked Mr. Carlton.
“Only a copy boy,” replied Larry.
“Many a copy boy has risen to be a reporter, though,” was the teacher’s answer. “I hope you will. But about the evening schools. You see this is summer, and the schools do not start until September. That’s two months off.”
“I don’t want to wait as long as that,” said Larry. “I want to be earning more money as soon as I can.”
“Perhaps I can help you,” said the instructor, who had taken an interest in the lad. “I have little to do nights, and we might make a class of one, with you for the pupil and me for the teacher, say three evenings a week. You would learn more rapidly then, and be ready when the evening schools opened in the fall.”
“I’m afraid I couldn’t pay for the lessons,” said Larry.
“Never mind about the pay,” said the professor. “I’ll be only too glad to help a boy that wants to help himself.”
So it was arranged. Larry had a good common school education, but there were many things he was ignorant of that the boys of his age, in the city, were instructed in. So, under the direction of Mr. Carlton he applied himself to his books evenings, and made good progress, everything considered.
“If I can only develop that ‘nose for news,’” Larry thought with a sigh. He imagined it was some magic gift that comes to only a favored few. And so, in the main, it does, but at heart every boy is a reporter, for if he doesn’t tell his chum or the family at home the different things he sees during the day he’s only half a boy. And telling the things one sees is, after all, the beginning of reporting, for that’s all a newspaper does, only on a larger scale.
Like many another thing that one wants very much and which often comes unexpectedly, Larry’s chance came when he had no idea it was so close at hand.