Mrs. Tracy is known in the neighborhood as “Mother” Tracy. Children have made it a point to follow her in the street, for she often distributed cents from her little old-fashioned reticule.
(An exception that proves a rule already stated is found in the second paragraph, which tells how a child turned in the fire alarm. An effective touch of local color is added in the last paragraph. The story is a good example of restraint in writing. No undue effort is made to impress the reader with the underlying pathos, but the facts, simply and concisely told, are allowed to speak for themselves. The headlines on the published story were: “Sisters, 102 and 95, Put in Peril by Cat--Children in Street Give Alarm After Animal Knocks Over Lamp and Starts Fire.”)
III. Write a story of 300 to 350 words from the following notes. Do not manufacture any details, but put those here given into the form of a readable news story:
Fire in brick tenement, 193 Adams street, 10 o’clock last night. Damage $2,000, estimated by Assistant Fire Chief Dunn. Cause was the explosion of lamp on second floor. All the tenants got out safely except Charles Lawrence, 35, a painter, who lived with his wife and three children on the top, fifth, floor. He was asleep in bed when his wife called out that the house was on fire and told him to get out quick. He got out of bed and told her to go along with the kids; said he would come as soon as he got his clothes on. She went with the children and on the stairway met Patrolmen Quinn and Brown. Told them her husband had delayed to dress. The building was filling with smoke and they turned their attention to rescuing those on the lower floors. When the firemen heard that Lawrence was still in the house, they went to his room and found him lying face downward on the floor, unconscious. He had inhaled smoke. He died in an ambulance on the way to the City Hospital. The fire was extinguished in forty-five minutes.
Richard Whiteing, the English novelist, is a strong believer that the art of literature has no greater aid than daily journalism. Speaking once he said:
“Some foolish people have said that daily journalism is killing literature in its highest forms. I say, to the contrary, that the daily paper provides a sort of first course in literature, and I am an immense admirer of the clear, incisive style adopted by the halfpenny press.