The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1900-02-25

| Of he court ard ne ", as transferred 10
station near the peFiphe ry OF the town
| where he couldn't be founG easHy' IN tlihe
| Bijah came to believe that he was really
| as funny as Quad made him o. I TO De ana
undoubtedly used to half belieN tnal he
| had been the making of the WIN er.
In those old days whenever any p ART OF
the paper got dun. Quad used to be a~ Neu
| TO liven it UP a BIT. His ccntrlDutloN
| bearing on the Civil War, then recent, ana
in which he had played a part. were
! commonly known in the office as 'thrilers,
| and properly so. They used to thrill Mr.,
| Quinby even, despite his long experience
! as a newspaper man. Sometimes quad
| was extremely valuable in the local CO.
| lumns. He could make an interesting
| story out of something that would degen-
| crate into a list of names or worse in
| other hands But he wasn't particularly
| strong on facts. / shall never forget the
| account of a certain fire from his pen
1t was one OF the most lurid reports ever
| handed over 20 a city editor, but it didn
| contain the names of the burned build
| ings owners or tenants or word about
| the insurance. SO q man VINO nau hoSe
/ for facts was sent to gatSer the delaliS'
| Combined the two reports ma ae remark
| ably fine local feature bat amer thdt
| Lewis was rarely or never eXpecN yea 10 40
| the whole of any news story.
Wonderful News Specials.
while on the Free Press. Quad ac'ed
| as Detroit correspondent for a big New
! York paper. and the things he te,egraphed
! to ii were marvels. Each had basis of
| fact as rule, but the filing was main
! ly fiction. Net often was one of his dis
| patches less than two columns long and
| the telegraph poles made them pretty eX-
| pensive TO the New York paper, but they
| were eagerly accepted and prin' ed, and
more would have been taken readily could
he have furnished them, for they made
circulation and caused the paper TO be
copied wherever the English language was
read. One of the most remarkable of
these specials appeared the day after the
great railroad accident at Ashtabula. The
special told the personal experiences of an
old man and his wife who had survived
the catastrophe and had been interview
ed in Detroit on their way home by the
correspondent The story was nothing less
than a human document. 1t related the
sensations of the couple as they went
down with the bridge, of their terror az
they disappeared under the ice in the
frigid waters of the creek, of their strug-
gle to the surface, of the burning cars
and the dual peril-dre and water-that
threa tened all hands, of their ultimate
rescue, of the scenes about the wreck and
of the kindness of strangers to them. NO
other paper had half so absorbing a story
of the wreck and the correspondents of
all the other sheets were brought up vita
round turn by their managing editors
for missing the old couple. There was one
point about the story, that none of the
fault-hnding editors knew of, however,
there wasn't grain of fact in the whole
thing the old couple and their thrilling
experiences being creations of Quads I'M
agtnation.
QUAD used to be constantly on the look
out for good pegs to hang his long and
picturesque telegraphit fiction on, and on
one occasion he got all ready to write a
Z inn n11nf of a AynnPTQ6 aXRpllgiOn
in Canada, not far from Detroit He
didn't propose to see Inc execution, his
intention being to supply The details from
his own fertile Imagination.
But working through the Free Press
l managed to have the proposed victim
of the law reprieved, and so he wasn't
| executed. The day after the reprieve,
Quad said to me, almost with tears
| in his eyes, that I had played him low
down trick Then he asked me a lot
about the layout of the Jail in which
the condemned was Imprisoned.
JoIIying a Disgrunued sheriff.
/ Il gave him the information and day
! or two later the New York pager he wrote
| for printed the most extraordinary special
/ 1t had had from quad for whole year
/ In brief, il told how the condemn ed muir
/ derer, on the night before Hle day set for
| the hanging, had opened his cell door in
his sleep and walked to the end of the
! tolIluOf Win lllcdSQEIN SltP.
There he had gone through the mo-
/ tons of mounting a flight of steps had
! bent his head as if to receive the death,
cap and afterward the moose, and then
had jumped into the air, strangled, as il
/ actually hanged afterward falling down
apparently lifeiess.
IAN this was witnessed, the dispatch
said, by a Jail attendant who was rem
/ dered speeches. with horror by what
/ he saw. The special continued with the
| statement that the man believed himself
| dead on regaining consciousness and for
| long time would not be convinced other
/ wise. At the wind-up il was stated that
/ a broad black mark was found round his
/ neck as il he had actually been hanged,
when he was taken back to his cell. Sci
entists may scott as they will, the
! concluding sentence, but this is fact and
/ it is exciting much comment here
| THE story attracted no end of notice,
! not only among the people at large but
! also among those who thought themselves
! thinkers. one, professor in Yale Col
! lege, wrote deliberately to show how it
| was quite within the scientific poss Utilities
| that the mans belief in his own execution
| could actually cause a black mark around
| his neck. OF course, all the other papers
| were sCooped, and all the other corre-
/ spouoentS were severely berated by their
| employers. Moreover the sheriff in charge
/ was severely reprimanded by the Cana
dian minister of Justice for allowing the
| cell door to be left unlocked. Had Quad
told me why he was asking about the lay
| of the jail, I'd have told him that the
! cell doors were always locked and that no
/ condemned murderer could get out into
! the corridor at night.
'The sheriff asked me to help him dis
! prove the story, and | took him to Quad
! for advice, without explaining that he was
the correspondent. Quad gravely read the
account himself had written and the let
Ter from the minister of justice
" It's all frightful shame he cried
| with tears in his voice, and | don't won
der you want denial printed. But really
| you shouldn't have any such thing done.
/ y on are man of some dignity-the high
est official in your county. and you can't
afford TO pay any attention to a low down,
scoundrelly scrbbler like the fellow who
did this. II would be sadly mira dig. J ust
! say nothing and hold your head high
| ..frln ehnrifr nc.r..ol IN tiIc n,,.I thn go