The Brookhaven leader., 1884-01-31
col. RIED'S LADY REPORTER.

COL. RlED'S LADY REPORTER.
A lady reporter may be a success in
tbe crowded and methodical East, where
the baseball editor loathes the market
reports, and the police-court man would
rather be fired than attempt a report of
the minister's alliance; but in the I'm
tied resources of Western journalism.
where Il reporter is able to gloat over
dor fight one moment, and in the
next pcne rate the hallowei circle of
home, with all its beautiful and holy
traditions, and write up scandal, she
is a vast and monumental failure. do
not mean this as slur upon lady jour
nalis,s at large, but as a solemn warI-
inc to them that they had better not be
at large in the wild, untu ored W est
and, il they have any aspirations, to by
all means coniinc them to contributions
tothosc thrilling ser ais entitled "Housc-
hold Hints" and "t seful Recipes
which are to be found in all well-regu-
lated journals. The glnterng and
vyacious personalities popular beyond
the Missouri, the tact re Iuired TO eX-
PLAIN to a 20 pound man how his name
crrpt INTO the police reports. to say
nothing of the inaccessible location of
the free lunches, would all tend to make
- lady reporter Discouraged and wish
she was dead; while her close sleeves
and pocketless jerSe. would give the
other sex such an enormous advantage
over her in the poNer games at the
Press Club that she would be reduced
to constant pcnurv. These are things
which are prone TO be overlooked in the
clad, girlish enthusia m of the moment,
but they are cold, deathless facts, all the
same.
ALWAYS told Colonel Ried that it was
most unnatural thing to suppose that
Providence ever intended a woman for
reporter. SO was surprised and
shocked when learned that he had en-
plo ed one. Ried was running the DO
lo"es Nc~S, had a good circulation in a
lively town. the county printing, and
was amassing so much real esta'e that
few men stood higher that he on The de
linQucnt taX-list when he took this i'll
advised and fatal step. He was a yer,
l"rge, pompouS gentleman, and the suS
picion prevailed at Dolores that he had
been great society man-a regular
butt ilv-back Fast and, indeed, when
the question whether it was good man
nerS to carry bowie-knife in ones
bootleg at a soirec was agitating the
best people of the town, it was finally
/, fcrred to him, as the leading AUTHORITY
on etiquette in the country. The fact
was, though, the Colonel was really as
timid as hare in the presence of
woman, and couldn tell quadrille
from a quadroon at twenty yards; and,
possibly, this diflidence and inability TO
ar-ue the most trivial point with one OF
the sex led to h S employing her She
was very oung, yer prett5 and had a
sngularly confiding way of talking that
pat ordinary matters in the light of con-
fidential disclosures. and carried a GER
tain suhtle, treachcrouS tattert with it
that sent an id;otic grin into the coun-
tenance of every man she talked to. 1t
seems str nge to me. now, that per-
son of the foresight of the Colonel could
not have had some forcboding of his
doom in all these things.
v ell, the first trouble was about the
exchanges. Now, every body knows
that it is a well-establshed fact that a
newspaper with a piece cut out will
make woman pcrfeatl5 desperate un,
til she finds out what it was. The con-
sequence was that when Miss Nolan
that was her name - ran across about a
hundred Of them, all more or less mutt
lated b. Ried in getting up his spicv
and orig nal editorial notes, she settled
herscl ri hit down and wasn't available
for assignment for week. After that
the Colonel read his exchanges in the
cOuntnr-room and h d them in scared,
hal hearted way under the stove when
ever she came in.
A short time after that she remarked,
one day, in the office, that Judge Cur
ran, down at the police cOult, was show
ing partiality to the Felipe representa-
tive, and Ried tod her to give him a
good scoring. She condensed her
wrath in one trenchant line:
Judge Curran is hale 'ul thing"
The Colonel, VINO prlded himself up
on his vigorous pc s1nalt'es, turned
pale and fled to the mountains for a
week when he read the item; but the
Eclipse ever after alluded to him as
cher" and old Miss Ried,' to his great
Sc ret anguish.
The next thing sc broke out in was
myster Gus little squibs, viii h she scat
te ed through the local, and were de-
signed for the editication Cf her bosom
friends. They wCrs such occult out
burss, for instance, as these: "kitty b
S emed to enjoy that ride very much
with G. f. c." "Ask Geo ge X. about
that ring" &C., your friend II. was in
town Yesterday" These items created
grave mi. trust among the honest
miners of Dolores, and tho rumor start
ell by the Eel pSe that they were the
passwords for horse-thief society, OF
which Ried vas secretly a member, and
thus communiclte ted with the remainder
OF the gang, was accep ed as the most
natural and probable explanat on. OF
course, the Colonel writ ed under this;
but S explanations were received with
general mlstrust The circulation of
the News steadily fell off, and he saw
with consternat on that there was a
slowly spreading belief in the COM
munity, from the extraordinary articles
that continually appeared in his col
umns, that he was growing gradually
Insane. This the Eclipse Insiduously
iiostered by copying the most remarka-
Die OF them with some such brief foot
note as this:
The above Is from yesterdays Ners. Who
can administer to q mind diseased!
Or.
we do not reproduce the above from the
Netos to gloat over a a fac which the pub
. nave long been cognlzant of, but a con-
,I,lcing proof that it is now time for friendsto