Los Angeles herald., 1892-12-07
THE HEROES or TODAY.
Among Them Must Be Includ-
ed Reporters.
THE DEMAND FOR INFORMATION.

To Satisfy the Wants of Newspaper Read
ers the Journalist Does Many Venture
some Deeds-The Recent Exploit of q
San Francisco Examiner Writer.
Poets have sung and romancists ex-
hausted the resources OF language IN cele-
brating the heroism of the knights of the
Middle Ages, the crusaders and cavaliers.
Not the less have the Homers and the Vir-
gils, the Walter Scots and the Irish bards
shed brilliancy on local and racial heroes.
It Is well. But new hero has stepped
into the arena, and the poet has not yet
come to celebrate him. The newspaper
man of the new era does all and dares all
in search of the actual facts. He is on the
front line of battle with the skirmishers;
he is with the detectives in trailing tho
criminals, and with the devoted nurse he
walks the fever haunted wards of the hos
pital where gangrene gnaws upon the liv-
ing flesh and black death hovers threaten
ingly in the poisoned air
Out of many classes of heroes one is here
selected as type-the newspaper journalist
who deals with criminals and detectives
and out Of many heroes in that line only the
latest is taken as an illustration-namely,
Mr.. Henry Bigelow, of the San Francisco
Examiner, who recently traced to their
mountain retreat the alleged train robbers,
Chris Evans and John Sontag, passed some
time with them, and with = moral courage
quite as remarkable rs his physical cour-
age gave to the world their side Of the af-
fair.
A few words are necessary in advance to
introduce Mr. Bigelow to the reader. After
sixteen years of newspaper life be has re-
Gently given to the world his experience
under the heading, "Some People Have
Met" In it he tells of interviewing two
queens-Kapiolani and Liliuokalani. This
was when Mr. Bigelow went from San
Francisco to Honolulu with the funeral
cortege accompanying the remains of King
David Kalakaua. He had his snap shot
photographer ready, and then came III the
diplomacy to get the royal wife and sister
in-law to kneel by the bier.
Diplomacy was necessary. With the aid
of Colonel Boyd he succeeded in getting
all the Hawaiian royal family interested
in the way the empress of Germany be-
haved on like occasion. The rest must
be told in his own language:
How did the empress kneel?" said the
colonel, with intense fervor.
IL your majesty Will CONSENT, Salu L. pre-
pairing to go down on my marrow bones, II
will pose myself in that position" 1 posed
Then the queen came down with alacrity, and
did it much more gracefully than could I. A
moment more and her royal sister-in-law was
at her side, and the camera snapped SUCCESS
fully.
Somehow or other another invention worried
mo, and I persuaded the reigning queen TO
place her hand upon the crown that rested on
the casket while the dead kings wife placed
herself in an attitude Of prayer at the head of
the bier, with the kahili bearers holding aloft
their plumes.
After that the rest was easy. The ladies
posed in every desired attitude, and, what
was Of more value, they talked with the
utmost freedom. 1t all went down i'll
Photographic pothooks and reappeared in
racy English in the San Francisco Exam
liner, to the profit of the publishers and the
eyaltation of Mr. Bigelow 1t was super
lative impudence, it was sublime j'cheek"
but it was "business"