The epochal event
was embodied in the form of a small clipping from an evening paper,
stating that a six-year-old boy had been fatally burned at a bonfire
near the North River. Banneker, Mr. Greenough instructed him mildly, was
to make inquiries of the police, of the boy's family, of the hospital,
and of such witnesses as he could find.
Quick with interest he caught up his hat and hurried out. Death, in the
sparsely populated country wherefrom he hailed, was a matter of
inclusive local importance; he assumed the same of New York. Three
intense hours he devoted to an item which any police reporter of six
months' standing would have rounded up in a brace of formal inquiries,
and hastened back, brimful of details for Mr. Greenough.
"Good! Good!" interpolated that blandly approving gentleman from time to
time in the course of the narrative. "Write it, Mr. Banneker! write it."
"How much shall I write?"
"Just what is necessary to tell the news."
Behind the amiable smile which broadened without lighting up the
sub-Mongol physiognomy of the city editor, Banneker suspected something.
As he sat writing page after page, conscientiously setting forth every
germane fact, the recollection of that speculative, estimating smile
began to play over the sentences with a dire and blighting beam.
Pages:
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270