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A Newspaper Story

Short Stories

"Fox-in-the-Morning"

A Bird of Bagdad

A Blackjack Bargainer

A Call Loan

A Chaparral Christmas Gift

A Chaparral Prince

A Comedy in Rubber

A Cosmopolite in a Cafe

A Departmental Case

A Dinner at--------*

A Double-Dyed Deceiver

A Fog in Santone

A Harlem Tragedy

A Lickpenny Lover

A Little Local Colour

A Little Talk about Mobs

A Madison Square Arabian Night

A Matter of Mean Elevation

A Midsummer Knight's Dream

A Midsummer Masquerade

A Municipal Report

A Newspaper Story

A Night in New Arabia

A Philistine in Bohemia

A Poor Rule

A Ramble in Aphasia

A Retrieved Reformation

A Ruler of Men

A Sacrifice Hit

A Service of Love

A Snapshot at the President

A Strange Story

A Technical Error

A Tempered Wind

According to Their Lights

After Twenty Years

An Adjustment of Nature

An Afternoon Miracle

An Apology

An Unfinished Christmas Story

An Unfinished Story

Aristocracy Versus Hash

Art and the Bronco

At Arms With Morpheus

Babes in the Jungle

Best-Seller

Between Rounds

Bexar Scrip No. 2692

Blind Man's Holiday

Brickdust Row

Buried Treasure

By Courier

Calloway's Code

Caught

Cherchez La Femme

Christmas by Injunction

Compliments of the Season

Confessions of a Humorist

Conscience in Art

Cupid a La Carte

Cupid's Exile Number Two

Dickey

Dougherty's Eye-Opener

Elsie in New York

Extradited from Bohemia

Fickle Fortune or How Gladys Hustled

Friends in San Rosario

From Each According to His Ability

From the Cabby's Seat

Georgia's Ruling

Girl

He Also Serves

Hearts and Crosses

Hearts and Hands

Helping the Other Fellow

Holding Up a Train

Hostages to Momus

Hygeia at the Solito

Innocents of Broadway

Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet

Jimmy Hayes and Muriel

Law and Order

Let Me Feel Your Pulse

Little Speck in Garnered Fruit

Lord Oakhurst's Curse

Lost on Dress Parade

Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches

Makes the Whole World Kin

Mammon and the Archer

Man About Town

Masters of Arts

Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

Modern Rural Sports

Money Maze

Nemesis and the Candy Man

New York by Camp Fire Light

Next to Reading Matter

No Story

October and June

On Behalf of the Management

One Dollar's Worth

One Thousand Dollars

Out of Nazareth

Past One at Rooney's

Phoebe

Proof of the Pudding

Psyche and the Pskyscraper

Queries and Answers

Roads of Destiny

Roses, Ruses and Romance

Rouge et Noir

Round the Circle

Rus in Urbe

Schools and Schools

Seats of the Haughty

Shearing the Wolf

Ships

Shoes

Sisters of the Golden Circle

Smith

Sociology in Serge and Straw

Sound and Fury

Springtime a La Carte

Squaring the Circle

Strictly Business

Strictly Business

Suite Homes and Their Romance

Telemachus, Friend

The Admiral

The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes

The Assessor of Success

The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear

The Badge of Policeman O'Roon

The Brief Debut of Tildy

The Buyer From Cactus City

The Caballero's Way

The Cactus

The Caliph and the Cad

The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock

The Call of the Tame

The Chair of Philanthromathematics

The Champion of the Weather

The Church with an Overshot-Wheel

The City of Dreadful Night

The Clarion Call

The Coming-Out of Maggie

The Complete Life of John Hopkins

The Cop and the Anthem

The Count and the Wedding Guest

The Country of Elusion

The Day Resurgent

The Day We Celebrate

The Defeat of the City

The Detective Detector

The Diamond of Kali

The Discounters of Money

The Dog and the Playlet

The Door of Unrest

The Dream

The Duel

The Duplicity of Hargraves

The Easter of the Soul

The Emancipation of Billy

The Enchanted Kiss

The Enchanted Profile

The Ethics of Pig

The Exact Science of Matrimony

The Ferry of Unfulfilment

The Fifth Wheel

The Flag Paramount

The Fool-Killer

The Foreign Policy of Company 99

The Fourth in Salvador

The Friendly Call

The Furnished Room

The Gift of the Magi

The Girl and the Graft

The Girl and the Habit

The Gold That Glittered

The Greater Coney

The Green Door

The Guardian of the Accolade

The Guilty Party - An East Side Tragedy

The Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss

The Hand that Riles the World

The Handbook of Hymen

The Harbinger

The Head-Hunter

The Hiding of Black Bill

The Higher Abdication

The Higher Pragmatism

The Hypotheses of Failure

The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson

The Lady Higher Up

The Last Leaf

The Last of the Troubadours

The Lonesome Road

The Lost Blend

The Lotus And The Bottle

The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein

The Making of a New Yorker

The Man Higher Up

The Marionettes

The Marquis and Miss Sally

The Marry Month of May

The Memento

The Missing Chord

The Moment of Victory

The Octopus Marooned

The Passing of Black Eagle

The Pendulum

The Phonograph and the Graft

The Pimienta Pancakes

The Plutonian Fire

The Poet and the Peasant

The Pride of the Cities

The Princess and the Puma

The Prisoner of Zembla

The Proem

The Purple Dress

The Ransom of Mack

The Ransom of Red Chief

The Rathskeller and the Rose

The Red Roses of Tonia

The Reformation of Calliope

The Remnants of the Code

The Renaissance at Charleroi

The Roads We Take

The Robe of Peace

The Romance of a Busy Broker

The Rose of Dixie

The Rubaiyat of a Scotch Highball

The Rubber Plant's Story

The Shamrock and the Palm

The Shocks of Doom

The Skylight Room

The Sleuths

The Snow Man

The Social Triangle

The Song and the Sergeant

The Sparrows in Madison Square

The Sphinx Apple

The Tale of a Tainted Tenner

The Theory and the Hound

The Thing's the Play

The Third Ingredient

The Trimmed Lamp

The Unknown Quantity

The Unprofitable Servant

The Venturers

The Vitagraphoscope

The Voice of the City

The Whirligig of Life

The World and the Door

Thimble, Thimble

Tictocq

To Him Who Waits

Tobin's Palm

Tommy's Burglar

Tracked to Doom

Transformation of Martin Burney

Transients in Arcadia

Two Recalls

Two Renegades

Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen

Ulysses and the Dogman

Vanity and Some Sables

What You Want

While the Auto Waits

Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking

Witches' Loaves







At 8 A. M. it lay on Giuseppi's news-stand, still damp from the
presses. Giuseppi, with the cunning of his ilk, philandered on the
opposite corner, leaving his patrons to help themselves, no doubt on
a theory related to the hypothesis of the watched pot.

This particular newspaper was, according to its custom and design, an
educator, a guide, a monitor, a champion and a household counsellor
and _vade mecum_.

From its many excellencies might be selected three editorials. One
was in simple and chaste but illuminating language directed to
parents and teachers, deprecating corporal punishment for children.

Another was an accusive and significant warning addressed to a
notorious labour leader who was on the point of instigating his
clients to a troublesome strike.

The third was an eloquent demand that the police force be sustained
and aided in everything that tended to increase its efficiency as
public guardians and servants.

Besides these more important chidings and requisitions upon the store
of good citizenship was a wise prescription or form of procedure laid
out by the editor of the heart-to-heart column in the specific case
of a young man who had complained of the obduracy of his lady love,
teaching him how he might win her.

Again, there was, on the beauty page, a complete answer to a young
lady inquirer who desired admonition toward the securing of bright
eyes, rosy cheeks and a beautiful countenance.

One other item requiring special cognizance was a brief "personal,"
running thus:


DEAR JACK:--Forgive me. You were right. Meet me corner Madison and
----th at 8.30 this morning. We leave at noon. PENITENT.


At 8 o'clock a young man with a haggard look and the feverish gleam of
unrest in his eye dropped a penny and picked up the top paper as he
passed Giuseppi's stand. A sleepless night had left him a late riser.
There was an office to be reached by nine, and a shave and a hasty cup
of coffee to be crowded into the interval.

He visited his barber shop and then hurried on his way. He pocketed
his paper, meditating a belated perusal of it at the luncheon hour.
At the next corner it fell from his pocket, carrying with it his pair
of new gloves. Three blocks he walked, missed the gloves and turned
back fuming.

Just on the half-hour he reached the corner where lay the gloves and
the paper. But he strangely ignored that which he had come to seek.
He was holding two little hands as tightly as ever he could and
looking into two penitent brown eyes, while joy rioted in his heart.

"Dear Jack," she said, "I knew you would be here on time."

"I wonder what she means by that," he was saying to himself; "but it's
all right, it's all right."

A big wind puffed out of the west, picked up the paper from the
sidewalk, opened it out and sent it flying and whirling down a side
street. Up that street was driving a skittish bay to a spider-wheel
buggy, the young man who had written to the heart-to-heart editor for
a recipe that he might win her for whom he sighed.

The wind, with a prankish flurry, flapped the flying newspaper against
the face of the skittish bay. There was a lengthened streak of bay
mingled with the red of running gear that stretched itself out for
four blocks. Then a water-hydrant played its part in the cosmogony,
the buggy became matchwood as foreordained, and the driver rested very
quietly where he had been flung on the asphalt in front of a certain
brownstone mansion.

They came out and had him inside very promptly. And there was one who
made herself a pillow for his head, and cared for no curious eyes,
bending over and saying, "Oh, it was you; it was you all the time,
Bobby! Couldn't you see it? And if you die, why, so must I, and--"

But in all this wind we must hurry to keep in touch with our paper.

Policeman O'Brine arrested it as a character dangerous to traffic.
Straightening its dishevelled leaves with his big, slow fingers, he
stood a few feet from the family entrance of the Shandon Bells Cafe.
One headline he spelled out ponderously: "The Papers to the Front in a
Move to Help the Police."

But, whisht! The voice of Danny, the head bartender, through the
crack of the door: "Here's a nip for ye, Mike, ould man."

Behind the widespread, amicable columns of the press Policeman O'Brine
receives swiftly his nip of the real stuff. He moves away, stalwart,
refreshed, fortified, to his duties. Might not the editor man view
with pride the early, the spiritual, the literal fruit that had
blessed his labours.

Policeman O'Brine folded the paper and poked it playfully under the
arm of a small boy that was passing. That boy was named Johnny, and he
took the paper home with him. His sister was named Gladys, and she
had written to the beauty editor of the paper asking for the
practicable touchstone of beauty. That was weeks ago, and she had
ceased to look for an answer. Gladys was a pale girl, with dull eyes
and a discontented expression. She was dressing to go up to the
avenue to get some braid. Beneath her skirt she pinned two leaves of
the paper Johnny had brought. When she walked the rustling sound was
an exact imitation of the real thing.

On the street she met the Brown girl from the flat below and stopped
to talk. The Brown girl turned green. Only silk at $5 a yard could
make the sound that she heard when Gladys moved. The Brown girl,
consumed by jealousy, said something spiteful and went her way, with
pinched lips.

Gladys proceeded toward the avenue. Her eyes now sparkled like
jagerfonteins. A rosy bloom visited her cheeks; a triumphant, subtle,
vivifying, smile transfigured her face. She was beautiful. Could the
beauty editor have seen her then! There was something in her answer
in the paper, I believe, about cultivating kind feelings toward others
in order to make plain features attractive.

The labour leader against whom the paper's solemn and weighty
editorial injunction was laid was the father of Gladys and Johnny. He
picked up the remains of the journal from which Gladys had ravished a
cosmetic of silken sounds. The editorial did not come under his eye,
but instead it was greeted by one of those ingenious and specious
puzzle problems that enthrall alike the simpleton and the sage.

The labour leader tore off half of the page, provided himself with
table, pencil and paper and glued himself to his puzzle.

Three hours later, after waiting vainly for him at the appointed
place, other more conservative leaders declared and ruled in favour of
arbitration, and the strike with its attendant dangers was averted.
Subsequent editions of the paper referred, in coloured inks, to the
clarion tone of its successful denunciation of the labour leader's
intended designs.

The remaining leaves of the active journal also went loyally to the
proving of its potency.

When Johnny returned from school he sought a secluded spot and removed
the missing columns from the inside of his clothing, where they had
been artfully distributed so as to successfully defend such areas as
are generally attacked during scholastic castigations. Johnny
attended a private school and had had trouble with his teacher. As
has been said, there was an excellent editorial against corporal
punishment in that morning's issue, and no doubt it had its effect.

After this can any one doubt the power of the press?




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