Rather dourly and speculatively, therefore, after I had visited four or five of these offices with exactly the same result in each instance, I went finally to City Hall Park, which fronted the majority of them—the Sun, the Tribune, the Times, the World, the Press—and stared at their great buildings. About me was swirling the throng which has always made that region so interesting, the vast mass that bubbles upward from the financial district and the regions south of it and crosses the plaza to Brooklyn Bridge and the elevated roads (the subways had not come yet). About me on the benches of the park was, even in this gray, chill December weather, that large company of bums, loafers, tramps, idlers, the flotsam and jetsam of the great city’s whirl and strife to be seen there today. I presume I looked at them and then considered myself and these great offices, and it was then that the idea of Hurstwood was born. The city seemed so huge and cruel. I recalled gay Broadway of the preceding summer, and the baking, isolated, exclusive atmosphere of Fifth Avenue, all boarded up. And now I was here and it was winter, with this great newspaper world to be conquered, and I did not see how it was to be done. At four in the afternoon I dubiously turned my steps northward along the great, bustling, solidly commercial Broadway to Fifteenth Street, walking all the way and staring into the shops. Those who recall Sister Carrie’s wanderings may find a taste of it here. In Union Square, before Tiffany’s, I stared at an immense Christmas throng. Then in the darkness I wandered across to my sister’s apartment, and in the warmth and light there set me down thinking what to do. My sister noticed my mood and after a little while said:
“You’re worrying, aren’t you?”
“Oh no, I’m not,” I said rather pretentiously.
“Oh yes, you are too. You’re wondering how you’re going to get along. I know how you are. We’re all that way. But you mustn’t worry. Paul says you can write wonderfully. You’ve only been here a day or two. You must wait until you’ve tried a little while and then see. You’re sure to get along. New York isn’t so bad, only you have to get started.”
I decided that this was true enough and proposed to give myself time to think.
CHAPTER LXXI
But the next day, and the next, and the next brought me no solution to the problem. The weather had turned cold and for a time there was a slushy snow on the ground, which made the matter of job-hunting all the worse. Those fierce youths in the anterooms were no more kindly on the second and fifth days than they had been on the first. But by now, in addition to becoming decidedly dour, I was becoming a little angry. It seemed to me to be the height of discourtesy, not to say rank brutality, for newspapers, and especially those which boasted a social and humanitarian leadership of their fellows in American life, to place such unsophisticated and blatant and ill-trained upstarts between themselves and the general public, men and women of all shades and degrees of intelligence who might have to come in contact with them. H. L. Mencken has written: “The average American newspaper, especially the so-called better sort, has the intelligence of a Baptist evangelist, the courage of a rat, the fairness of a prohibitionist boob-bumper, the information of a high-school janitor, the taste of a designer of celluloid valentines, and the honor of a police-station lawyer.” Judging by some of my experiences and observations, I would be willing to subscribe to this. The unwarranted and unnecessary airs! The grand assumption of wisdom! The heartless and brutal nature of their internal economies, their pandering to the cheapest of all public instincts and tendencies in search of circulation!
After several days I made up my mind to see the city editor of these papers, regardless of hall boys. And so, going one day at one o’clock to the World, I started to walk right in, but, being intercepted as usual, lost my courage and retreated. However, as I have since thought, perhaps this was fortunate, for going downstairs I meditated most grievously as to my failure, my lack of skill and courage in carrying out my intention. So thoroughly did I castigate myself that I recovered my nerve and returned. I reëntered the small office, and finding two of the youths still on hand and waiting to intercept me, brushed them both aside as one might flies, opened the much-guarded door and walked in.
To my satisfaction, while they followed me and by threats and force attempted to persuade me to retreat, I gazed upon one of the most interesting city reportorial and editorial rooms that I have ever beheld. It was forty or fifty feet wide by a hundred or more deep, and lighted, even by day in this gray weather, by a blaze of lights. The entire space from front to back was filled with desks. A varied company of newspaper men, most of them in shirt-sleeves, were hard at work. In the forward part of the room, near the door by which I had entered, and upon a platform, were several desks, at which three or four men were seated—the throne, as I quickly learned, of the city editor and his assistants. Two of these, as I could see, were engaged in reading and marking papers. A third, who looked as though he might be the city editor, was consulting with several men at his desk. Copy boys were ambling to and fro. From somewhere came the constant click-click-click of telegraph instruments and the howl of “Coppee!” I think I should have been forced to retire had it not been for the fact that as I was standing there, threatened and pleaded with by my two adversaries, a young man (since distinguished in the journalistic world, Arthur Brisbane) who was passing through the room looked at me curiously and inquired courteously: