As to how I work—one word pretty well covers that question. The word is "HARD!" I try to get interesting characters and titles first of all; after that, plots. The characters are always people I know well. The plots may come from any source—things that have happened to me, a chance remark of some individual, a newspaper headline, an adventure I would relish having myself, etc.
To a beginner I would advise a thorough reading of the popular magazines, a shot at the newspaper game if possible, plenty of clean white paper and a resolution to take lots of punishment. Thais all I would presume to advise—and I may have given an overdose already!
MONEY TO BURNS[6]
By H. C. WITWER
"When fortune favors a man too much, she makes him a fool!"
Neither Napoleon, Nero, Alexander, Jack Johnson, Mark Antony nor Bill Hohenzollern was the composer of that remark, though, honest, I bet they all thought it about the time the world was giving them the air. However, the boy who originally pulled the above wise crack was Mr. Publius Syrus, a master mind current in dear old Syria during the fiscal year of 77 B.C. Two thousand annums after Publius gave up the struggle, Jimmy Burns, a professional bellhop—age, twenty; color, white; nationality, Broadway-American—decided to find out for himself whether or not Pubby's statement was true. It is! Loll back in the old easy chair for about approximately a half-hour and I'll do my stuff. Perhaps you don't know me, as Eve coyly remarked to Adam, so taking advantage of your good nature I'll introduce myself. I'm Gladys Murgatroyd, a switchboard operator at the Hotel St. Moe. I was slipped into the cradle under the name of Mary Ellen Johnson, but as that smacks more of the kitchen than the drawing-room, I changed that label some time ago to the Gladys Murgatroyd thing, which I admit sounds phony—still, I'm a phone girl, so what could be sweeter?
However, one morning during a slight lull in the daily hostilities between me and the number-seeking guests, I am reading my favorite book—the Morning Squawk, the newspaper that made the expression "It is alleged" famous, or maybe it was the other way around. Spattered all over the front page is a highly sensational account of the latest adventures of one of these modern prodigal sons—in round numbers, Carlton Van Ryker, whose father celebrated his ninety-fifth birthday by entering a tomb in a horizontal position and leaving his only progeny two paltry $500,000 bank notes. The young millionaire with the name like a Pullman car and a soft collar had been stepping high, wide and fast with his pennies and at the time of going to press was the plot of an "alienation of my wife's affections" suit, a badly mismanaged shooting affair, and various other things that would keep his mind off the weather for quite a spell. While I'm drinking all this in with my lustrous orbs, along comes Mons. James Joseph Aloysius Burns, who was either the hero of this episode in my exciting career, or else he wasn't.
Although I've known Jimmy Burns for the worst part of two years, we're still good friends, both of us being refugees from the land of Utah. My home town was the metropolis of Bountiful, where I once won a beauty contest single-handed, and James fled from Salt Lake City, where smoking cigarettes is the same as throwing rocks at the President, in the eyes of the genial authorities.
But to get to the business of the meeting—Jimmy sported a sarcastical sneer as he approached my switchboard on this particular morning.