"Us ain't in no hot water, jedge," she drawled. "Us ain't been doin' nothin' but dancin'."
"What's your name, girl?" inquired the clerk.
He was answered by Frogeye, who celebrated his latest release from gaol by attending the Potlicker Ball. "Dat's Three-Finger Fanny," stated Frogeye in a voice of authority. "She done start de hull rucus."
Three-Finger Fanny bridled. Before she could open her mouth, Frogeye plunged into the tale: "Ef it hadn't er been fo' dat three-fingered, cross-eyed, blistered-footed gal we'd er been dar dancin' yit. But she an Bugabear spill de beans. She come up ter me an' say, 'Mister Frogeye, kin you ball de Jack?' I tells her she don't see no chains on me, do she? An' we whirl right in. Hoccome I knowed she promise dat dance ter Bugabear? We ain't ball de Jack twice 'roun' fo' heah he come wid er beer bottle shoutin' dat I done tuk his gal erway. I'se 'bleeged ter 'fend mahse'f, ain't I, jedge? Well, den!"
The conclusion of Frogeye's story lacked climax, but apparently the judge got the gist of it, for he said: "It seems to me all of you dancers need a summer vacation. They say there's nothing like a little arm work to improve the grip. Thirty days, everybody!"
But every reader knows that in one round-up of negro malefactors, characters such as Frogeye, Three-Finger Fanny, and Bugabear are not going to be arrested at one "Potlicker Ball." The story is a good one if the reader will suspend his sense of realism sufficiently to enjoy it. But in its purport to be a true account of an arrest and a trial of certain persons, it makes one doubt first the story, then the newspaper that printed it, and finally newspapers in general. And so develops one of the main causes of criticism of the modern newspaper. A reporter must resolve to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. A journal loses its power the moment it is wrong.
XV. ACCIDENT, CRIME
210. Accident and Crime Stories.—Accident and crime stories are grouped together because they are handled alike and because they differ from each other only in point of view, or in the fact that in the one some one is guilty of lawbreaking, while in the other the participants are merely unfortunate. The two, of course, frequently overlap, since a death or a wreck which at first may seem purely accidental may later prove to have been the result of a criminal act. In this chapter, however, accident stories will be taken to include fires, street-car smash-ups, railroad wrecks, automobile collisions, runaways, explosions, mine disasters, strokes of lightning, drownings, floods, storms, shipwrecks, etc. In the list of crime will be placed murders, assaults, suicides, suspicious deaths, robberies, embezzlements, arson, etc. Of the accident class, the method of writing a fire story may be taken as a type for the whole group.
211. Lead to a Fire Story.—Ordinarily the lead to a story of a fire should tell what was destroyed, the location of the property, the extent of the damage, the occupants or owners, the time, the cause, and what made the loss possible,—answering, in other words, the questions who, what, when, where, why, how, and how much. Thus:
Fire originating in a pile of shavings crawled across a 100-yard stretch of dry Bermuda grass at an early hour this morning, destroying the cotton warehouse at 615 Railroad Street, owned by J. O. Hunnicut, president of the First National Bank. The loss is $25,000 with no insurance.