The Great Secretary-of-State Interview
town he would have to patrol, and whether to wear his reporter's badge on the breast of the waistcoat or at the bottom, like his Harlem literary-club pin. But he soon found that each reporter was sent for a particular piece of news, the existence of which was determined in some mysterious way by the city editor, who had his fingers on the pulse of the strenuous metropolis and scowled most of the time.
His few assignments were, for the most part, to get up minor obituaries—"obits" they were called—or to run down stories which the news-bureaus sent in (on type written tissue-paper, called "flimsy") to see if they were correct; and no one said anything about badges, which he had discovered were seldom worn, except at fires. Of late they had taken to sending him to the Weather Bureau occasionally to find out what kind of a day it was going to be, or to a police court to look out for picturesque cases, which a cub doesn't always recognize when he sees them; and of those he does cover he may forget to find out the age, address, initials, or occupation of someone in the story, or the name
128
