Miss Van Dyke's Best Story
He gave out an oracular utterance to the effect that he was after "hot stuff" for the paper, and consequently the reporters, wishing to retain their official heads, bestirred themselves to give him what he wanted.
He was a young man of intense and feverish activity, and the repose of Miss Van Dyke's manner did not appeal to him. So, too, her correct and colorless little stories, perhaps because constructed in the cool shadow of the angel's wings, struck him as having no "go!" Being a young man of frank nature, he did not take the trouble to conceal his impression, and Miss Van Dyke awoke to the painful consciousness that she was disapproved of by the new editor.
She was thinking of this as she stood at a window in the editorial rooms about half-past six o'clock on the afternoon of election day. There rose to her ears, from "Newspaper Row," the din of tin horns, fervently tooted by enthusiastic Tammanyites, who saw the approaching end of the so-called "reform administration." Even at this early hour it was admitted that Tammany had carried Greater New York by a sweeping plurality.
213
