, 1888-05-16
WHO WROTE TIE STORY,
What n Well Known Journalist Has to
Say for tho Reporter.

Say for tho Reporter.
Reporters, what are they2
They are the men that hold the mirror
up to nature. They paint the picture
which feasts the public eye They are
worn to skin and bone in the service of
others. They sharpen their wits, as they
do their pencils, along the line of duty,
whether duty calls them to the front of
battle, to coal mine depths, to torrid
heats or frigid blasts. Who plunged
through the billiards. drifts and told the
stories in the daily press2 l have upon
my table a red covered book, across
which, in startling type, l read New
York in the Blizzard" t~hirty-five pages
of closely printed type selected from the
columns of The New York Sun, embody-
ing a most faithful pen p~ortraiture of the
great city's three days snow siege.
Who wrote the story2
Whose dignity was cast aside, while
the heavens opened, and the hail came
down, and the myradic multitudinosities
of freezedom heaped up great mountains,
apparently impossible, mighty enough at
all events TO stop the onward plunging of
red hot locomotives, and to laugh to
scorn the futile efforts of mammoth
steam ploughs, to put under bondage
every road the country through, to force
great steamers on the rocks, to throw
down wires, to check industry in every
known channel, TO make trade dead and
throw commerce into slavery7
Newspaper pages voluminous in extent
told the story day by day.
Who wrote the story3
A merchapt prince is dying; the pub
lie want to know about him. A great
statesman losses on a bed of pain; the
public are greatly interested. An en-
peror crowned, with scepter in hand,
nears his first meeting with the king OF
kings, and all the world is hushed, anx-
ious to catch his last earthly utterance,
and to see with the eye of understanding
the pageant as it passes. Three hundred
men assemble in a hall, charged with tho
duty of selecting a presidential standard
bearer. Ten thousand spectators crowd
into the great spaces, gallery, amphithea-
tire. ~corridoristic, seeing and hearing,
participating TO n certain extent in the
ongoings of the deliberative body.
But the nation-how is it to know2
Why. the newspapers tell it.
Certainly. but who writes in Who
with quick eye detects Mr.. Jones from
Arkansas, as he rises in his place and
speaks TO the ears of a listening country
Who detects an oddity, n uniqueism, a
popularity Who, calm and without the
faintest trace of perturbation, looks upon
the 10, 900 excited men and women,
shouting, yelling. defying united ele-
ments in their uproar. and notes the
while, as the Geographic click click car
ries the news the land ground, every in
cident, so that he people, reading, are
made as familiar with the scenes Of tu-
multi and disorder as though they were
there2
This Is the reporters duty.
Millions of people born beyond the sea
live, and move, and conduct their in.
dnstries in this land of the free, retaining,
however, n more than umbilical attach
ment with their lnother country. How
eagerly they turn every morning to read
the news from abroad. Charleston
might he burned 100 times, Chicago
might go up in smoke and down in
flame, San Francisco might be swallowed
by an earthquake and the isles of the sea
forever disappear beneath the ccaseless
tides without causing more than n mo-
mentary exclamation, but let it be known
that Queen Victoria is on her death bed,
let it be understood that an uprising has
taken place in Ireland, cause it TO be pub
lished that the emperor and Bismarck
have quarreled, tell ever that n dynasty
has been shaken in China, how eagerly
they will peruse, how anxiously they
wait for the coming of the next batchl
Who tells it2-Joe Howard in New
York Graphic.