CHAPTER XXXIII.
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
The reporter makes gossip a business. He knows all the news of the city that is published, and he knows a good deal more that is never published. He asks you when he meets you, “Well, is there anything new?” and expects that you will disgorge all that you have heard that day, even if it concerns a matter that for your own interest had better not obtain publicity. He will think you a very mean man if you conceal from him the fact that your daughter has run away with the milkman, that you yourself have had a quarrel with your wife because she preferred the society of a man who carried a blue bag over his shoulder to that of her husband, or that you are short in your accounts and intend emigrating that night to a land of more salubrious climate than this. If you have had the misfortune to undergo any of these unpleasantnesses, or even others of lesser moment, the inquiring man of letters will feel utterly disgusted and aggrieved if you refuse to let him pluck the heart out of your mystery. If, however, you get the start of him and put the inquiry, “anything fresh?” you have got him. He will probably betray his chagrin by replying that the freshest thing he has seen that day is yourself, or employ some other threadbare witticism to cover his defeat. He will do anything but disclose to you his budget of facts. He probably has in his notebook things that will make the hair on the scalp of the great-headed public stand on end when his paper is issued and strewn broadcast among the people, but no word will he breathe to you of them. He knows that you would tell the first person you met, and thus
SET THE NEWS FLYING
until a rival journalist “got on to it.” When the news is actually made public through his paper, he has no further interest in it. It is a lemon that has been sucked, and has now no piquancy for him. This is his attitude towards the information he gleans that is published, but still more reticent is he in regard to what he does not publish. The reporter, bit by bit, loses, like the doctor and the lawyer, his faith in human nature. Like them he often gets glimpses in the back corners of people’s characters, which back corners are as guiltily hidden from the eye of man as the favorite sultana of an eastern monarch. As he goes along the street he sees many men who know him not, but whom he knows well. He knows of certain facts concerning them which the rest of the world knows nothing of. He sees them in places of honor and trust, in the mart, and in the church, and in the ball-room, and yet he knows that were those little damaging occurrences “learned by rote and cast into his teeth,” the trader, the deacon and the partner in the dance would shun them like lepers and pass by on the other side. Many a reputation is saved by his leniency. One of his commonest experiences, next to requests to put in certain names in his paper, is requests to keep others out. Gentlemen who have had the misfortune to appear before the Magistrate in the morning are the most frequent attenders in reportorial rooms for this purpose. They have first made application to the reporter in the Police court, and he has referred them to the city editor. That gentleman generally asks, Why should the report be mutilated for the purpose of keeping your name out of the paper? He points out that the public pay their money for a paper with the understanding that all the city happenings that came under
THE REPORTER’S EYE
should be found recorded therein. The fact that you were discovered at two in the morning seated on a wood-pile, rocking a loose plank and singing hush-a-by-baby, evidently suffering from the hallucination that you were performing a sweet domestic duty, would be a very interesting item to serve up for the delectation of the people who live next door to you, and indeed to all those who know you. Now why should I rob them of that pleasure. Then the supplicant is heard as to why. If it is a first offence the city editor, following the Magistrate’s rule, in all probability grants the prayer. This is the case of a man who has substantial standing in the community. But all kinds turn up on the same errand. A York street tough came in one day, and in a manner which was a curious blending of promises and threats, asked to have his name suppressed.
“You want your name kept out? Why it’s been in our paper a dozen times for worse things than fighting. Go away boy, go away.”
“Say, nobsy, I’ve got a new girl and she’ll give me the shake if she sees that.”
“Can’t do it sir.”
“Well, say, just make it read that I knocked the tar out o’ Mulligan will you, and that’ll make it all right.”