"Got staff appointment. Police Headquarters. $25 a week. Hurrah!"
I knew it would make her happy.
CHAPTER IX
LIFE IN MULBERRY STREET
It was well that I stopped to make explanations before I took hold in my new office. Mighty little time was left me after. What the fight was about to which I fell heir I have long since forgotten. Mulberry Street in those days was prone to such things. Somebody was always fighting somebody else for some fancied injury or act of bad faith in the gathering of the news. For the time being they all made common cause against the reporter of the Tribune, who also represented the local bureau of the Associated Press. They hailed the coming of "the Dutchman" with shouts of derision, and decided, I suppose, to finish me off while I was new. So they pulled themselves together for an effort, and within a week I was so badly "beaten" in the Police Department, in the Health Department, in the Fire Department, the Coroner's office, and the Excise Bureau, all of which it was my task to cover, that the manager of the Press Bureau called me down to look me over. He reported to the Tribune that he did not think I would do. But Mr. Shanks told him to wait and see. In some way I heard of it, and that settled it that I was to win. I might be beaten in many a battle, but how could I lose the fight with a general like that?
And, indeed, in another week it was their turn to be called down to give an account of themselves. The "Dutchman" had stolen a march on them. I suppose it was to them a very astounding thing, yet it was perfectly simple. Their very strength, as they held it to be, was their weakness. They were a dozen against one, and each one of them took it for granted that the other eleven were attending to business and that he need not exert himself overmuch. A good many years after, I had that experience as a member of a board of twelve trustees, each one of whom had lent his name but not his work to the cause we were supposed to represent. When we met at the end of that season, and heard how narrow had been the escape from calamity due to utter lack of management, a good Methodist brother put in words what we were each and every one of us thinking about.
"Brethren," he said, "so far as I can make out, but for the interposition of a merciful Providence we should all be in jail, as we deserve. Let us pray!"
I think that prayer was more than lip-service with most of us. I know that I registered a vow that I would never again be trustee of anything without trusteeing it in fact. And I have kept the vow.
[Illustration: Tribune Police Bureau. ]
But to return to Mulberry Street. The immediate result of this first victory of mine was a whirlwind onslaught on me, fiercer than anything that had gone before. I expected it and met it as well as I could, holding my own after a fashion. When, from sheer exhaustion, they let up to see if I was still there, I paid them back with two or three "beats" I had stored up for the occasion. And then we settled down to the ten years' war for the mastery, out of which I was to come at last fairly the victor, and with the only renown I have ever coveted or cared to have, that of being the "boss reporter" in Mulberry Street. I have so often been asked in later years what my work was there [Footnote: I say was; only in the last twelvemonth have I grasped Mr. Dana's meaning in calling his reporters his "young men." They need to be that. I, for one, have grown too old.], and how I found there the point of view from which I wrote my books, that I suppose I shall have to go somewhat into the details of it.