I had not scrawled more than eight or nine pages of this mush before the city editor, curious as to what I had discovered and wondering why I had not reported it to him, came over and picked up the many sheets which I had turned face down.
“No, no, no!” he exclaimed. “You mustn’t write on both sides of the paper! Don’t you know that? For heaven’s sake. And all this stuff about the political pot boiling is as old as the hills. Why, every country jake paper for thousands of miles East and West has used it for years and years. You’re not to write the general stuff. Here, Maxwell, see if you can’t find out what Dreiser has discovered and show him what to do with it. I haven’t got time.” And he turned me over to my gold-spectacled mentor, who eyed me very severely. He sat down and examined my copy with knitted brows. He had a round, meaty, cherubic face which seemed all the more ominous because he could scowl fiercely, and his eyes could blaze with a cold, examining, mandatory glance.
“This is awful stuff!” he said as he read the first page. “He’s quite right. You want to try and remember that you’re not the editor of this paper and just consider yourself a plain reporter sent out to cover some hotels. Now where’d you go today?”
I described as best I could the whirling world in which I had been.
“No, no! I don’t mean that! That might be good for a book or something but it’s not news. Did you see any particular man? Did you find out anything in connection with any particular committee?”
“Very good!” he said. “You haven’t anything to write,” and he tore up my precious nine pages and threw them into the waste basket. “You’d better sit around here now until the city editor calls you,” he added. “He may have something special he wants you to do. If not, watch the hotels for celebrities—Democratic celebrities—or committee meetings, and if you find any try to find out what’s going on. The great thing is to discover beforehand who’s going to be nominated—see? You can’t tell from talking to four or five people, but what you find out may help some one else to piece out what is to happen. When you come back, see me. And unless you get other orders, come back by eleven. And call up two or three times between the time you go and eleven.”