CHAPTER XXXVI

For years past during the summer months the Republic had been conducting a summer charity of some kind, a fresh-air fund, in support of which it attempted every summer to invent and foster some quick money-raising scheme. This year it had taken the form of that musty old chestnut, a baseball game, to be played between two local fraternities, the fattest men of one called the Owls and the leanest of another known as the Elks. The hope of the Republic was to work up interest in this startling novelty by a humorous handling of it so as to draw a large crowd to the baseball grounds. Before I had even heard of it this task had been assigned to two or three others, a new man each day, in the hope of extracting fresh bits of humor, but so far with but indifferent results.

One day, then, I was handed a clipping concerning this proposed game that had been written the preceding day by another member of the staff and which was headed “Blood on the Moon.” It purported to narrate the preliminary mutterings and grumblings of those who were to take part in the contest. It was not so much an amusing picture as a news item, and I did not think very much of it; but since I had been warned by Williams that I was about to be called upon to produce the next day’s burst, and that it must be humorous, I was by no means inclined to judge it too harshly.... The efforts of one’s predecessor always appear more forceful as one’s own threaten to prove inadequate. A little later Wandell proceeded to outline to me most of the conditions which surrounded this contest. “See if you can’t get some fun into it. You must do it. Some one has to. I depend on you for this. Make us laugh,” and he smiled a dry, almost frosty smile. “Laugh!” I thought. “Good Lord, how am I to make anybody laugh? I never wrote anything funny in my life!”

Nevertheless, being put to it for this afternoon (he had given me no other assignment, fancying no doubt that I might have a hard time with this), and being the soul of duty, I went to my desk to think it over. Not an idea came to me. It seemed to me that nothing could be duller than this, a baseball game between fat and lean men; yet if I didn’t write something it would be a black mark against me and if I did and it proved a piece of trash I should sink equally low in the estimation of my superior. I took my pencil and began scribbling a possible introduction, wondering how one achieved humor when one had it not. After writing aimlessly for a half-hour or so I finally re-examined the texts of my predecessors of previous days and then sought to take the same tack. Only, instead of describing the aspirations and oppositions of the two rival organizations in general terms, I assumed a specific interest and plotting on the part of certain of their chief officers, who even now, as I proceeded to assert and with names and places given in different parts of the city, were spending days and nights devising ways and means of outwitting the enemy. Thoughts of rubber baseball bats, baskets and nets in which flies might be caught, secret electric wiring under the diamond between the bases to put “pep” into the fat runners, seemed to have some faint trace of humor in them, and these I now introduced as being feverishly worked out in various secret places in order that the great game might not be lost. As I wrote, building up purely imaginary characteristics for each one involved (I did not know any of them), I myself began to grow interested and amused. It all seemed so ridiculous, such trash, and yet the worse I made it the better it seemed. At last I finished it, but upon re-reading it I was disturbed by the coarse horse-play of it all. “This will never get by,” I thought. “Wandell will think it’s rotten.” But having by now come to a rather friendly understanding with Williams, I decided to take it over and ask him so that in case I had failed I might try again.

Wearily he eyed me with his one eye, for already he had been editing this for days, then leaned back in his chair and began to read it over. At first he did not seem to be much interested, but after the first paragraph, which he examined with a blank expression, he smiled and finally chortled: “This is pretty good, yes. You needn’t worry about it; I think it’ll do. Leave it with me.” Then he began to edit it. Later in the afternoon when Wandell had come in to give out the evening assignments I saw Williams gather it up and go in to him. After a time he came out smiling, and in a little While Wandell called me in.

“Not bad, not bad,” he said, tapping the manuscript lightly. “You’ve got the right idea, I think. I’ll let you do that for a while afternoons until we get up on it. You needn’t do anything else—just that, if you do it well enough.”

I was pleased, for judging by the time it had taken to do this (not more than two hours) I should have most of my afternoons to myself. I saw visions of a late breakfast, idling in my room, walks after I had done with my work and before I returned to the office. Curiously enough, this trivial thing, undertaken at first in great doubt and with no sense of ability and with no real equipment for it, nevertheless proved for me the most fortunate thing I had thus far done. It was not so much that it was brilliant, or even especially well done, as that what I did fell in with the idle summer mood of the city or with the contesting organizations and the readers of the Republic. Congratulatory letters began to arrive. Pleased individuals whose names had been humorously mentioned began to call up the city editor, or the managing editor, or even the editor-in-chief, and voice their approval. In a trice and almost before I knew it, I was a personage, especially in newspaper circles.

“We’ve got the stuff now, all right,” Wandell cackled most violently one evening, at the same time slapping me genially on the shoulder. “This’ll do it, I’m sure. A few weeks, and we’ll get a big crowd and a lot of publicity. Just you stick to the way you’re doing this now. Don’t change your style. We’ve got ’em coming now.”

I was really amazed.

And to add to it, Wandell’s manner toward me changed. Hitherto, despite his but poorly concealed efforts, he had been distant, brusque, dictatorial, superior. Now of a sudden he was softer, more confidential.

“I have a friend up the street here—Frank Hewe, an awfully nice fellow. He’s the second assistant of this or that or the other such company. In one of these comic blurbs of yours don’t you think you could ring him in in some way? He’s an Elk and I’m sure the mention would tickle him to death.”

I saw the point of Mr. Wandell’s good nature. He was handing round some favors on his own account.

But since it was easy for me to do it and could not injure the text in any way, and seemed to popularize the paper and myself immensely, I was glad to do it. Each evening, when at six or seven I chose to amble in, having spent the afternoon at my room or elsewhere idling, my text all done in an hour as a rule, my small chief would beam on me most cordially.

“Whatcha got there? Another rib-tickler? Let’s see. Well, go get your dinner, and if you don’t want to come back go and see a show. There’s not much doing tonight anyhow, and I’d like to keep you fresh. Don’t stay up too late, and turn me in another good one tomorrow.”

So it went.

In a trice and as if by magic I was lifted into an entirely different realm. The ease of those hours! Citizens of local distinction wanted to meet me. I was asked by Wandell one afternoon to come to the Southern bar in order that Colonel So-and-So, the head of this, that or the other thing, as well as some others, might meet me. I was told that this, that and the other person here thought I must be clever, a fool, or a genius. I was invited to a midnight smoker at some country club. The local newspaper men who gathered at the LaClede daily all knew, and finding me in high favor with Phil Hackett, the lessee of the hotel bar whose name I had mentioned once, now laughed with me and drank at my expense—or rather at that of the proprietor, for I was grandly told by him that I “could pay for no drinks there,” which kept me often from going there at all. As the days went on I was assured that owing to my efforts the game was certain to be a big success, that it was the most successful stunt the Republic had ever pulled and that it would net the fund several thousand dollars.

For four or five weeks then it seemed to me as though I were walking on air. Life was so different, so pleasant these hot, bright days, with everybody pleased with me and my name as a clever man—a humorist!—being bandied about. Some of my new admirers were so pleased with me that they asked me to come to their homes to see them. I was becoming a personage. Hackett of the LaClede having asked me casually one day where I lived, I was surprised that night in my room by a large wicker hamper containing champagne, whiskey and cordials. I transferred it to the office of the Republic for the reportorial staff, with my compliments.

My handling of the fat-lean baseball game having established me as a feature writer of some ability, the Republic decided to give me another feature assignment. There had been in progress a voting contest which embraced the whole State and which was to decide which of many hundreds of school-teachers, the favorites out of how many districts in the State I cannot now recall, were to be sent to Chicago to see the World’s Fair for two or more weeks at the Republic’s expense. In addition, a reporter or traveling correspondent was to be sent with the party to report its daily doings and that reporter’s comments were to be made a daily news feature; and that reporter was to be myself. I was not seeking it, had not even heard of it, but according to Wandell, who was selecting the man for the management, I was the one most likely to give a satisfactory picture of the life at the great Fair as well as render the Republic a service in picturing the doings of these teachers. An agent of the business manager was also going along to look after the practical details, and also the city superintendent of schools. I welcomed this opportunity to see the World’s Fair, which was then in its heyday and filling the newspapers.

“I don’t mind telling you,” Wandell observed to me a few days before the final account of the baseball game was to be written, “that your work on this ball game has been good. Everybody is pleased. Now, there’s a little excursion we’re going to send up to Chicago, and I’m going to send you along on that for a rest. Mr. ——, our business manager, will tell you all about it. You see him about transportation and expenses.”

“When am I to go?” I asked.

“Thursday. Thursday night.”

“Then I don’t have to see the ball game?”

“Oh, that’s all right. You’ve done the important part of that. Let some one else write it up.”

I smiled at the compliment. I went downstairs and had somebody explain to me what it was the paper was going to do and congratulated myself. Now I was to have a chance to visit the World’s Fair, which had not yet opened when I left Chicago. I could look up my father, whom I had neglected since my mother’s death, as well as such other members of the family as were still living in Chicago; but, most important, I could go around to the Globe there and “blow” to my old confrères about my present success. All I had to do was to go along and observe what the girls did and how they enjoyed themselves and then write it up.

I went up the street humming and rejoicing, and finally landed in the “art department” of my friends.

“I’m being sent to Chicago to the World’s Fair,” I said gleefully.

“Bully for you,” was the unanimous return. “Let’s hope you have a good time.”