WILLIAM ELEROY CURTIS
CURTIS, WILLIAM ELEROY, occupies a unique position in journalism. On the third of December, 1893, he entered into a contract for life with Victor F. Lawson, proprietor of the Chicago "Daily News" and the Chicago "Record," to write a letter of twenty-five hundred or three thousand words every day of the year, for which he is paid the largest salary ever received for purely literary work. His headquarters are in Washington, but he is at liberty to go wherever he pleases at the expense of the Record-Herald, write upon any topic he desires, express any opinions he has on any subject, regardless of the policy of that paper. Since his contract took effect, Mr. Curtis has written 365 letters a year from all parts of the earth. This extraordinary contract and the not less extraordinary ability with which it has been fulfilled, is at least in part explained by these words of his own : "When I began work, I determined to be the best reporter in town; and have had that purpose ever since."
He was born in Akron, Ohio, November 5, 1850. His father, Eleroy Curtis, was a Presbyterian clergyman, marked by devotion to duty and love for his fellowmen. His mother, Harriet Coe Curtis, he says, probably influenced him more through her cheerful disposition than in any other way. William Curtis, of Appledore, Kent county, England, who joined the Massachusetts colony in 1632, with his brother-in-law, John Eliot, the Indian missionary and translator of the Bible into the Indian language, was Mr. Curtis' eariiest ancestor in America.
He had a vigorous physique in childhood and youth, and his especial taste was for books and music. His early years were passed in Sherburne, Chenango county. New York. "There I learned the printer's trade of Simeon B. Marsh, a famous writer of hymns, and assisted him to run a little country printing-office and publish a little weekly paper called 'The Home News' at Sherburne. He paid my wages in the form of music lessons," Mr. Curtis says of this early experience. After a course in the Rural high school, Clinton, New
