"When the man that shot Gene saw the policeman coming, he crouched down and shot at Policeman Laux, but, thank God, he missed him. Then policemen named Harrington and Rourke and Moran and Kehoe chased the man all around the streets there, some heading him off when he tried to run into that street that goes off at an angle—East Broadway, isn't it? A big crowd had come out of Chinatown now and was chasing the man, too, until Policemen Rourke and Kehoe got him backed up against a wall. When Policeman Kehoe came up close, the man shot his pistol right at Kehoe and the bullet grazed Kehoe's helmet.
"All the policemen jumped at the man then, and one of them knocked the pistol out of his hand with a blow of a club. They beat him, this Billy Morley, so Jerry says his name is, but they had to because he fought so hard. They told me this evening that it will go hard with the unfortunate murderer, because Jerry says that when a man named Frank O'Hare, who was arrested this evening charged with stealing cloth or something, was being taken to headquarters, he told Detective Gegan that he and a one-armed man who answered to the description of Morley, the young man who killed Gene, had a drink last night in a saloon at Twenty-second Street and Avenue A, and that when the one-armed man was leaving the saloon he turned and said, 'Boys, I'm going out now to bang a guy with buttons.'
"They haven't brought me Gene's body yet. Coroner Shrady, so my Jerry says, held Billy Morley, the murderer, without letting him get out on bail, and I suppose that in a case like this they have to do a lot of things before they can let me have the body here. If Gene only hadn't died before Father Rafferty got to him, I'd be happier. He didn't need to make his confession, you know, but it would have been better, wouldn't it? He wasn't bad, and he went to mass on Sunday without being told; and even in Lent, when we always say the rosary out loud in the dining-room every night, Gene himself said to me the day after Ash Wednesday, 'If you want to say the rosary at noon, mammy, before I go out, instead of at night when I can't be here, we'll do it.'
"God will see that Gene's happy to-night, won't he, after Gene said that?" the mother asked as she walked out into the hallway with her black-robed daughters grouped behind her. "I know he will," she said, "and I'll—" She stopped with an arm resting on the banister to support her. "I—I know I promised you, girls," said Gene's mother, "that I'd try not to cry any more, but I can't help it." And she turned toward the wall and covered her face with her apron.[49]
[49] Frank Ward O'Malley in the New York Sun; reprinted in The Outlook, lxxxvii, 527-529.
278. Informational Type.—The second type of feature story, the informational, is the one we find most frequently in the feature section of the editorial page and the Sunday edition. It includes such subjects as, "How to Jiu-jitsu a Holdup Man," "Why Hot Water Dissolves Things," "Duties of an International Spy," "Feminism and the Baby Crop," "Why Dogs Wag their Tails," "The World's Highest Salaried Choir Boy," etc. Stories of new inventions and discoveries, accounts of the lives of famous and infamous men, of barbaric and court life, methods for lowering the high cost of living, explanations of the workings of the parcel post system, facts telling the effects of the European war,—these are some of the kinds of news included. Timeliness is not essential, but is valuable, as in the publication of Halloween, Christmas, Easter, and vacation stories at their appropriate seasons.
279. Sources.—The sources of feature stories are everywhere,—on the street, in the club, at church, in the court room, on the athletic field, in reference books and government publications, in the journals of fashion, anywhere that an observing reporter will look. Old settlers and residents, particularly on their birthdays and wedding anniversaries, are good for stories of the town or state as it used to be fifty years ago; and their photographs add to the value of their stories. Travelers just returned from foreign countries or from distant sections of the United States provide good feature copy. Educational journals, forestry publications, mining statistics, geological surveys, court decisions, all furnish valuable data. The only requirement in obtaining information is personal observation and investigation.
280. Form.—The form of the feature story is anomalous. It has none. One is at liberty to begin in any way likely to attract the reader, and to continue in any way that will hold him. Possibly informal leads are the rule rather than the exception—leads that will arrest attention by telling enough of the story to excite curiosity without giving all the details. Note the suspensive effect of the following leads:
SAM DREAMS OF ROBBERS
Two big black-bearded robbers, armed to the hat-band and vowing to blow his appetite away from his personality if he uttered a tweet, walked into the mind of Samuel Shuster on Wednesday night as he lay snoring in his four-post bed at No. 11 Market Street. One placed a large warty hand around Samuel's windpipe and began to play it, and the other with a furtive look up and down stage reached into his pocket and drew forth $350. With a scream, two yowls, and a tiger, Samuel awoke....