36. The attachés of the United States Weather bureau here say that while the precipitation has been unusually heavy, the present storm and that predicted to follow it are but the usual rainy season rainfalls, for which there is no freak or extraordinary explanation.
CHAPTER XIV
A. Number 1 below is a copy of a speech delivered by George Ade last night at a dinner in honor of Mr. Brand Whitlock, United States minister to Belgium. Number 2 is a New York dispatch about the dinner. Write up the story for an Indianapolis morning paper on which you are working. George Ade's home is in Indiana.
1. If you will go over the list of young men who wrote for Chicago newspapers twenty-five years ago you will be convinced that the newspaper business is the greatest business in the world for getting out of.
Let us go away back to 1890. Also let us go back to Chicago. I hope I am not asking too much. About twenty-five years ago in the Middle West there was a restless movement toward the newspaper office. Nearly every young man who could no longer board at home decided to enter journalism. Chicago called him. Chicago is the home of opportunity—and other things.
The young man who wishes to be a book agent must have a prospectus. Any solicitor must own a set of application blanks. The burglar needs a jimmy. But the journalist requires only a collection of adjectives. So I repeat that about 1890 all the by-roads led to Chicago and all the young men who abhorred farm work were arranging to be editors.
The period to which I refer was to Chicago what the Elizabethan period was to English letters. Joseph Medill and Wilbur F. Storey were just rounding their interesting careers. George Harvey was flashing across our local horizon on his way to New York. M. E. Stone was hacking out of one newspaper office in order to assume general supervision of all the newspapers in the world. Vance Thompson wrote for an evening paper. Opie Read was up and down the street, working as little as possible. William Elroy Curtis had just served a term as society editor of the Inter Ocean. Paul Potter was tied to an editorial desk, but already he had heard the call of the stage and was getting ready to write Trilby. Will Payne, Kennett Harris, Ray Stannard Baker, Forrest Crissy, Emerson Hough, and other contributors to the five- and ten-cent beacons of the present day were humbly contributing to the daily press. Ben King was writing his quiet verse and peddling it around. Eugene Field had come on from Kansas City and was trying to weave Culture's Garland, in spite of the fact that the high wind constantly disarranged his material. Julian Street was still operating as an amateur, while Henry Hutt and the Leyendecker boy and Pennrhyn Stanlaws and other illustrators who have brought the show girl into the home life of America were students at the Art Institute, over on the lake front. Do you recognize some of the names? Most of them are now typical New Yorkers—born west of Kalamazoo.
It was in 1890 that John T. McCutcheon came up from Indiana and broke into the old News office. Perhaps you know that later on he became the Thomas Nast of the corn belt—one of the few cartoonists with a really definite influence and a loyal following. Tom Powers was just beginning to draw his comics.
Shortly before Melville Stone escaped from bondage he received a call at his office from a talented young woman who acted on the stage. I am not repeating any ancient scandal. I am simply telling you the facts. The young actress showed the great editor some verses which had been dedicated to her by a lad living on the West Side. Mr. Stone sent for the young man and put him to work, and the next morning he knew the young man had written Robin Hood, and since then he has written most of the plays with music presented anywhere in America. You must have seen the name of Harry B. Smith on the billboards.
A young person with very red hair did general hustling on the Inter Ocean for a short time and then disappeared. Years later he bobbed up in congress as a member from Kansas and began to shout defiance at Uncle Joe Cannon. The young person's name was Victor Murdock.