One gloomy winter's morning I got down to the office at eight o'clock as usual, and had hardly reached my desk when the news editor—a kind man, who was always giving me opportunities of distinguishing myself—came up and began to speak at once in a very mysterious voice.
"Got a dandy assignment for you this morning," he said.
I looked up gratefully.
"I guess you carry a six-shooter, don't you?" he asked. "You may need it this trip."
"Oh!" I managed to gasp.
"A lion's escaped," he went on, in the quick, nervous American way of an American news editor.
"Has it really?" I said, wondering what was coming next.
"Jaffray's Circus came to town last night, the lion somehow got out, and they've been chasing it all night. Got it cornered in a stable at last, somewhere in East 19th Street; but it attacked and mauled a valuable horse there, and I understand is still at bay. That's all I know. Get up there as quick as you like, and get us a regular blazing story of it. You can run to a column," he added over his shoulder, as he returned to his desk to distribute the other morning assignments, "and let's have your copy down by messenger in time for the first edition."
No one ever disputed with the news editor, or asked unnecessary questions, but many a reporter did a lot of steady thinking when he got outside the office and safely on to the doorstep.
I crammed my pocket full of paper from the big heap at the middle table, and swaggered out of the room with my nose in the air, as though hunting escaped lions was a little matter I attended to every day of my life, and that did not disturb me an atom.