TEACHER--"Do you know the population of New York?"
MAMIE BACKROW--"Not all of them, ma'am, but then, we've only lived here two years."--_Puck_.
NEWSBOY--"Great mystery! Fifty victims! Paper, mister?"
PASSER-BY--"Here, boy, I'll take one." (After reading a moment.) "Say, boy, there's nothing of the kind in this paper. Where is it?"
NEWSBOY--"That's the mystery, guvnor. You're the fifty-first victim."
APPLICANT--"I'm ready to begin at the bottom, sir."
NEWSPAPER PROPRIETOR--"Well, what's your idea?"
"To start first with the leading editorials and gradually work myself up to the sporting page."
"Never state as a fact anything you are not certain about," the great editor warned the new reporter, "or you will get us into libel suits. In such cases use the words, 'alleged,' 'claimed,' 'reputed,' 'rumored,' and so on."
And then this paragraph appeared in the society notes of the paper:
"It is rumored that a card party was given yesterday by a number of reputed ladies. Mrs. Smith, gossip says, was hostess. It is alleged that the guests with the exception of Mrs. Bellinger, who says she hails from Leavitt's Junction, were all from here. Mrs. Smith claims to be the wife of Archibald Smith, the so-called 'Honest Man' trading on Key Street."
And when the editor had read the report a whirling mass claiming to be the reporter was projected through the window and struck the street with a dull thud.
REPORTER--"Madam, you may recollect that we printed yesterday your denial of having retracted the contradiction of your original statement. Would you care to have us say that you were misquoted in regard to it."--_Life_.
As any reporter will tell you, the only place in a newspaper office where real toil is done is the city room. Imagine our pleasure when we overheard one of the office boys saying: "When I first came here I thought it was called the 'sitting room.' I said something about the sitting room one day to the city editor, and I thought he was going to throw me down the elevator shaft."
"Can you make anything out of the news from Europe?"
"Easiest thing in the world. I only read the newspapers every other day. In this way I get a connected story of our side or the other and avoid the denials."--_Puck_.