THE INCIDENT OF THE BRITISH AMBASSADOR.
By Bliss Perry,
Author of "The Broughton House," "Salem Kittredge and Other Stories," etc.
WITH certain aspects of the famous incident that brought England and the United States to the very verge of war in the closing year of the nineteenth century, the public is already familiar. The cooler heads, on both sides of the Atlantic, had long perceived that a crisis was approaching. Our new policy of territorial expansion, the attitude of the Administration toward Hawaii, the correspondence with Germany over her interference with South American republics, had all tended to inflame international jealousies. The discovery of gold in Alaska, two years before, had aroused the old question of the northwest boundary, and our irritation against Great Britain was greatly increased by that unlucky after-dinner speech of Lord Rawlins, the British Ambassador, on the subject of seals. Americans were thoroughly angered, and though it was shown the next day that his lordship had been misreported, there were newspapers from one end of the country to the other that openly talked war. England at first refused to believe that the United States was seriously bent upon hostilities, but day by day the outlook grew more ominous, until at last she was startled by the intelligence cabled from New York early one October morning, that the British Ambassador had been subjected to gross personal indignity during a visit to one of the foremost American universities. What ensued is well known, but very few have known hitherto the real cause of that dangerous and almost fatal imbroglio.
It began in the office of the New York "Orbit." The managing editor, standing at a desk in his shirt-sleeves, and dashing his pencil across some verbose "copy," had said irritably, without looking up, "Did you get that story, Andrews?"
"No," replied dejectedly the tall young fellow at his elbow. "I went way over there, but she was another sort of woman altogether. I judged that it wouldn't do."
"You judged it wouldn't do!" burst out the "old man." He was doing the city night editor's work for him, and was out of temper already. "'The Orbit' doesn't want your judgment; it wants the news. Your week is up Friday, Andrews, and then you can walk. You came here with a reputation as a hustler, and you're no good, except on that football column. We want men who can gather news. See?"
"Suppose there isn't any?" said Andrews, sulkily.
"Then, blank it, make news!"
The editor snatched at a handful of Associated Press despatches, and forgot the new reporter utterly. The latter turned away with a rather pitiable effort at nonchalance, and walked down the room between the long rows of desks. The electric lights wavered everywhere before his eyes. He felt a trifle sick.
For two years, ever since he began to serve as college correspondent for "The Orbit," it had been his ambition to secure a position upon its staff. They had liked the stuff he sent them, and in the football and baseball seasons he had cleared enough from "The Orbit" to pay all his college expenses. And now, in the October after graduation, to lose the post he had so long desired simply because he failed to furnish a sensation where there was obviously no sensation at all! It made him feel that a livelihood was a terribly insecure matter. To think that he, Jerry Andrews, a great man in his university only four months before, should be dismissed like a scrub-woman!
He trudged uptown to his boarding-house, to save car fare, and his bedtime pipe was a gloomy one. Thanks to superb health and a naturally reckless temper, however, he slept like a schoolboy, and it was only after his late breakfast that the gravity of his situation forced itself upon him. There were but two days in which to retrieve himself with "The Orbit." He reported at the office an hour earlier than usual, but there was nothing assigned to him. He consulted a half-dozen of his fellow reporters, but though they swore sympathetically at the "old man," they had no suggestions as to space work, which seemed his only resource.
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