The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-09-22

Then he suddenly stopped and gathered the imaginary safe and tossed 1t from him. And his arms shot out ward. The robbers had blown open the doors.
 His grief was pitieble With tears yelling in his eyes, with arms out stretched before him and his hands open he made splendid gesture of loss and despair They had robbed him ot his all An, pity him, the robbers, the thiefs had taken all that he had in the world. Or at least that's what thought the gesture meant. But compatriot and a fellow cloth ing merchant who could speak English came in at that moment to borrow tack hammer He interpreted the | Polish gentlemen's story. I had been l mistaken.
 A street car conductor had cruelty refused to let his washer-woman put basket of clothing on the car. They had quarreled. The conductor had thrown the clothes off the car and pushed the woman after them The washerwoman had come to his store to tell him she would have to quit wash ing If they would not let her carry the clothes home on the car. He was without washerwoman and he did not know where. he could get one. Would not the newspapers print something
 
 black washerwomen come on the cars with baskets of clothes? That was all.
 Three insistent calls for a reporter came in one morning inside of two hours. The reporter was to go to a store in North Montgomery. It was important and urgent. The City Edi- tor was impressed by the urgency of the calls. l got the assignment--a. mile and half off and the July sun at white heat
 The place was a little corner gro- cery. The story might be robbery or a dastardly murder The little store looked as though 1t were capable of producing any kind of a sensation. A green reporter is the most enthusi- astic young Micawber that the world ever saw--a young dreamer who is al- ways confident that some great story is going to turn up just around the corner.
 The proprietor was cutting off dimes worth of cheese for negro in pair of greasy overa1ls. He asked me if was reporter and I told him was, without making the qualifying statement that the City Editor had said recently was not reporter and would never be a reporter.
 What paperT' the proprietor asked cunningly, as he put the cover back on the cheese box. I told him. The ques- tton showed that he had telephoned all the other papers.
 He took me cautiously behind the meat box. Then he wiped his hands on some waste paper and pulled roll of something from his back pocket. was green, but I knew the amateur poet when I met him. The roll was big sheet of wrapping paper. On 1t he had written six lines of poetry He read 1t to me in husky voice as we stood behind the meat box. It was entitled ITO a Hay Wagon Going to Town"
 I had seen some bad poetry in my time. but I had never seen any quite as vile as that. Not that there was anything the matter with the subject Robert Burns wrote a beautiful little poem "To 8 Field Mousse" But there are no Robert Burns keeping stores in the Montgomery suburbs.
 l advised him not to print the poem In newspaper. l told him 1t sounded to me like magazine poetry-and it did sound like some magazine poetry I had read. hinted mysteriously of man who got $10 from a magazine for a piece of poetry no bigger than that He seemed willing to let us print it. and run the risk of losing money But refused to let him make any such sacrifice. Then I walked that mile and half back to town in the July sun.
 The common characteristic of all eccentrics, who are regular newspaper callers, Is the possession of that mo- tive which is shared by greater and more successful men-the desire for publicity The successful eccentric is all the more eager for 1t. In his belief that all he needs to achieve fame is to catch the eye of the public. All his hobby needs, to his thinking, to con- quer the world. is for it to be known.
 He is, when his effusions are turned down and his idea rejected at the newspaper office. as resentful as he was jealous. More enemies have been achieved by newspaper editors in turning down bad prose and worse poetry than from any other cause.
 To the veteran editor of newspa- per. not a thousand miles away from The Advertiser building. a would-be contributor with his rejected manu- script in his hand. said, in deep scorn;
 You call yourself an editor. Ac- cording to your ideas an editors busi- ness is to keep things from going in the paper. You have kept more things from going in the paper than you ever had put in it.
 The fellow wasn't so far wrong, af- ter all.