Myles did get one item into the paper, though, and it was printed in full just as he wrote it, at which he was greatly pleased. During the day he had found time to run down to the Mills Building and see the Mr. Leigh mentioned in his note of that morning. This gentleman gave him a bit of news regarding certain important railway changes that was of the greatest interest to all Wall Street men, and the Phonograph was the only paper in which it appeared the next morning. Thus it was what is known to reporters as a “beat” on all the other papers, and for obtaining it Myles received great credit. He afterward obtained a number of just such “beats” from the same source, and gained quite a reputation by them; but he was wise enough to say nothing of how he got hold of them.
So the week passed quickly and busily, and at its end, though he had got but one item of any account into the paper, Myles felt that he had learned more than during any ten preceding weeks of his life, and he was already a most enthusiastic reporter.
On Saturday morning he received from the cashier a little brown envelope containing ten dollars, which, as it was the first money he had ever earned, gave him a feeling of manly independence such as he had never before felt. That evening he went home to spend Sunday, for, as every Phonograph reporter was entitled to have for his own one day out of the week, Myles had chosen that as his “day off.”
The boy had felt manly and self-important the week before, when he went home as a college student and captain of the “‘Varsity” crew; but he felt doubly so now as a self-supporting man of business, even if he was only a reporter.
His mother knew his step as he approached the house, and was waiting for him at the open door.
“How could you, Myles!” she exclaimed, between kisses and hugs. “How could you become a horrid, common reporter?”
“I couldn’t, mother. I mean to be a most uncommon reporter, and not horrid in any sense of the word.”
“But what shall I tell people, when they find out that you have left college and ask what business you have gone into?”
“Tell them the truth, mother, and I’ll back you up in it,” replied Myles, laughing.
As he made his way to the big chair in which his father sat, the blind man said: