Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1910-12-06

resuscitate me I'll have a chance 10
talk to her. Even if she will not talk
1 can get a good story by describing
her methods Of work."
The city editor half-heartedly advis-
ed against it. He did not want to be
responsible for the young mans death
by drowning, though he, too, saw the
chance of getting good story" by this
method. The reporter persisted and
finally obtained his editors assent.
The reporter was not drowned. He
almost wished, though, that he had
been. The policeman with whom he
had framed up the brave rescue hap
pened to be called to court and forgot
all about the arrangement. Another
policeman was on post. The woman
ambulance surgeon was off on another
call, and a man doctor pumped out the
water he hadn't swallowed. Then the
strange policeman arrested him for at
tempting suicide, and only the inter-
vention of his paper saved him from a
night in a cell.
But good luck in getting beats comes
to the reporter, as well as bad luck
When the Hotel Windsor in New York
took fire some years ago reporter for
an evening paper happened to be
standing at the desk waiting to see
one of the guests. He gathered as
many facts as possible and telephoned
them to his paper from booth in the
burning hotel, winding up his thrilling
eyewitness tale with:
"Good-by, the telephone booths on
fire now."
Quick Thought in a Big Crisis.
Sometimes both good and bad luck
come at once. When President Nc
Kinley was shot in the convention hall
at Buffalo, a six-footer in the news
gathering business was the first to
reach the only available telephone in
the building. He called up his paper
and gave it the news.
The police had locked the door to
prevent panic and the escape of any
possible accomplices of the assassin,
so behind this chap quickly lined up a
score of other reporters, each eager
to use the only telephone.
The man at the phone saw the wait
ing line of the other reporters behind
him. In terse sentences he gave the
news to his own paper, then, with one
sweep of his powerful arm, pulled the
entire telephone apparatus to the floor.
The other reporters almost mobbed
him. but his paper had a twenty nine
minute beat on the great, though sad,
sensation.
at Never Can Happen Again"
AS a matter of fact most newspaper
beats are matter of accident, although
occasionally they are obtained by pre-
arrangement, as in the case of the ex-
elusive account of Peary's reaching the
north pole, a far-seeing editor having
made an arrangement with him before
he started. Perhaps it would be bet
ter to say that the opportunity comes
by accident and the beat" is due to
the alertness of the reporter who
seizes the opportunity. They tell a
story of how one Of the best known of
American city editors made his repu-
tation as a news gatherer.
A prominent Chicago merchant had
separated from his wife and they had
closed their home. A rumor reached
the newspapers that reconciliation
had been effected and that husband
and wife were to meet In the deserted
mansion on a certain evening.
The reporters hastened there, and
sure enough, found the wife. She de-
MED that there was to be any recon-
ciliation, and explained that she had
merely come there to get some of her
personal possessions. The reporters
left, deciding that it was a case of mo
story"
One hour later the embryo city edi-
tor arrived, having waited to eat his
dinner before he covered the assign
ment. He was admitted to the house
and the woman was telling him the
same story that she had told the 9TH
ers, when suddenly her husband en-
tered with revolver drawn, shot her
through the heart, and then put bull
let in his brain before the astounded
reporter could interfere.
A hasty examination showed him
that both had died instantly. He calm
ly took their pictures from the wall and
quietly left the house, carefully locking
the door after him. having first taken
the precaution to eXtinguish the lights.
His paper came out the next morn
ing with his eyewitness story of the
double tragedy, with pictures Of the
husband and wife and a graphic de-
scription of the shooting. Not another
in the city had line about
it, and even the police knew nothing
of it until the paper was on sale on the
street.
The discovery of the identity of the
victim in the famous Guldensuppe
murder case was an accidental beat.
William Guldensuppe, it will be recall
ed, was a rubber in Turkish bath es-
tablishment. His attentions to Mrs.
Augusta Mack aroused the jealousy Of
her lover, Martin Thorn. Mrs. Mack
lured Guldensuppe to cottage in the
suburbs of New York, where Thorn
shot him and dismembered the body.
The trunk Of the body and one hand
had been found. Every newspaper in
the city had a score of reporters at
work on the case, but day after day
passed without any one ascertaining
the identity of either the murdered
man or his murderers.
The sporting editor of one of the pa
pers and his chum, who was on a rival
paper, had the Turkish bath habit and
frequently went to the establishment
where Guldensuppe had been employ
ed After Guldensuppe had been miss
ing several days one of the other rub