Till the skull of an old mammoth caved the head of Thompson in.
And this is all I have to say of these improper games,
For I live at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;
And I’ve told in simple language what I know about the row
That broke up our Society upon the Stanislow.
A beginner in newspaper work in a Southern town, who occasionally sent “stuff” to one of the New York dailies, picked up last summer what seemed to him a “big story.” Hurrying to the telegraph office he “queried” the telegraph editor: “Column story on so and so. Shall I send it?”
The reply was brief and prompt, but, to the enthusiast, unsatisfactory. “Send six hundred words,” was all it said.
“Can’t be told in less than twelve hundred,” he wired back.
Before long the reply came: “Story of creation of world told in six hundred. Try it.”