with us, for a few minutes later he had given me a card to Laffan, manager of the New York Sun. "Go and see him the day after to-morrow," he said. "Meanwhile I'll write him a line about you."
Had it been possible to go then and there I should have felt more confidence and less nervousness than when I called at the appointed hour. The interval, with its hopeful anticipation and alternate dread, was a bad preparation for appearing at my best. After a few questions, however, Mr. Laffan, a man of very powerful position in the newspaper world, a great art collector and connoisseur, head, too, of the Laffan News Bureau, said that Mr. McCloy, managing editor of the Evening Sun, would give me a trial as a reporter, and I could start next Monday—four days away—at fifteen dollars a week. I had mentioned that I knew French and German, and could write shorthand. He spoke to me in both languages, but, luckily, he did not think of testing the speed and accuracy of my self-taught Pitman.
On the staff of a great New York newspaper! That it was anti-British and pro-Tammany did not bother me. A reporter! A starting salary of £3 a week that might grow! I wrote the news to my father that very afternoon, and that night Kay, Boyde and I had almost a festive dinner at Krisch's restaurant—that is, we ended with sweets and coffee. The following day I spent practising my rusty shorthand, about 90 words a minute being my best speed consistent with legibility. Would it be fast enough? I might have spared myself the trouble for all the use shorthand was to me on the Evening Sun during the two years I remained with it. Only once—much later, when I was with the New York Times, did it prove of value, securing for me on that occasion an increase of salary. . . . The slogan of the Sun, printed on each copy was, "If you See it in the Sun it is so!" accuracy the strong point. The Times preferred a moral tinge: "All the News that's Fit to Print." Both mottoes were faithfully observed and rigidly practised.
