and how he had broken into baseball. When Billy Sunday was young, there used to be intense rivalry between the hose teams of small communities. To prevent the running in of any professional foot-racers, a rule had been made that all members of the hose team must be residents of the town and must be working at some gainful occupation. The firemen in a nearby town wanted Billy as a member of their team, so they got him a job at driving a hearse. Saturday afternoons he used to play ball, and his skill as a small-town player attracted the attention of 'Pop’ Anson who took him on as an apprentice to his team.
Dig Deep; Story's There
I don’t care how big a man is nor how obscure he is, if you will dig deep enough, you will find a rich ledge of human interest. I have interviewed President Wilson, Thomas A. Edison, Sir Douglas Haig, Tom Lawson, and other men of this type and the stories I have got from them are interesting sidelights on their character and achievements, more or less off the beaten path of news-gathering.
I said, and I mean it, that you can get a story from anyone you meet. The other day I looked up from my work and discovered the Journal had a new office boy. I called him over to my desk, motioned to a chair and told him I was going to interview him. He had never been interviewed and was very much disconcerted. Before we had gone very far, I discovered that his father, now a butcher, had been a Rabbi in Russia, and that Sam, the new office boy, was next to youngest of all the Boy Scouts who attended the big jamboree in London. “When we were being reviewed in Brussels,” he said, “King Albert saw that I was one of the smallest scouts in line, so he came and shook hands with me and asked what the American Boy Scouts had done to help win the war. I told him we had sold Liberty bonds, and I showed him the medal I had been awarded for selling Victory bonds. He told me about the Boy Scouts of his country. He talked pretty good English for a foreigner and was very pleasant and friendly.”
Whether it is the president of a corporation or the office boy, the commander in chief of the Army or a buck private, if you can keep your freshness of view point, your interest and enthusiasm you can always find interesting people. Be brief. Read Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech as an example of brevity, lucidity and sincerity. If you are not wholesome, natural, and sincere you will not be able to impress others with the sincerity of your work. Keep your ideals. Don’t become cynical. Keep an open mind and heart. Be cheerful, courteous and courageous. Your own character is inevitably reflected in your work. To see the thing clearly and describe it simply is the secret of writing readable stories. Describe things with which you are familiar and if you are not familiar with them become so. Be eager to learn, stay out of the limelight. Let the reader see what you are describing. Cultivate tolerance and sympathy. Use short words so as not to confuse your readers. Use short sentences. Be accurate. Stick to your subject. Quit when you are through. Give the facts honestly, accurately, and let the reader draw his own conclusions.
Don't Overwrite It
Cultivate restraint of statement, and poise. Eliminate non-essentials. Avoid pleasing platitudes, glittering generalities and forensic fourflushing. Be honest with yourself and your readers. Don’t try to fool them or make a thing seem other than it is. See that nothing sidetracks your story. Let it travel steadily toward its goal. See that your terminal facilities are in working order, so that the story may not wander out upon some sidetrack and get lost. Don’t be satisfied with your work. Cultivate a divine discontent. Make your best a stepping stone for still better work. You must be willing to work long and hard and stick to the task for the joy of doing good work. If you are interested only in what is in your pay envelope and not in serving your fellow men and making this a better world for men to live in you will miss the real and permanent re ward of service.
