The newspapers had been notified, and the long advertisements, of course, were paid for in the ordinary way, but the free advertisement obtained was of a kind that mere dollars could not buy.
Occasional interludes of this sort certainly brightened the sordid daily routine, but they were rare. A big fire was a thrilling experience, a metal badge pinned to the coat allowing the reporter to go as near as he liked and to run what risks he pleased. Such work became, with time, mechanical in a sense, it occurred so often, arson, too, being very frequent, especially among the Jews of the East side. Even in those days the story of the two Jews was a "chestnut": "I'm thorry your blace of business got burnt down last Tuesday," says Ikey. To which Moses replies: "Hush! It's next Tuesday!"
The rôle of the reporter in New York, of course, was an accepted one; publicity and advertisement were admittedly desirable; the reporter as a rule was welcomed; privacy was very rare; a reporter could, and was expected to, intrude into personal family affairs where, in England, he would be flung into the street.... Other interviews were of a pleasanter kind; I remember Henry Irving and Ellen Terry in their special train, Sarah Bernhardt, at the Hoffman House hotel, and many a distinguished foreigner I was sent to interview because I could speak their languages. The trip to meet the Atlantic steamer at Quarantine I regarded as a day off: it could be made to last for hours. I saw the coast, moreover, and smelt the sea....
Most of my work on the Evening Sun, at any rate, took me among the criminal and outcast sections of the underworld. In those days the police, as a whole, were corrupt, brutal, heartless; I saw innocent men against whom they had a grudge, or whom they wanted out of the way for some reason, "railroaded to gaol" on cooked-up evidence; sickening and dreadful scenes I witnessed.... The valueless character of human evidence I learned daily in the trials I reported, so that even a man who was
trying to tell the truth seemed unable to achieve it.
