(4) Play up the unusual element in this story by putting it in the first group of words.
Mrs. Minnie Greene, a colored janitress, was burned to the point
of death by a fire started by the son's rays focused by a large
reflector which she carried. Mrs. Greene, with the big brass reflector
under her arm, was standing in front of the First Presbyterian
church when suddenly she felt a sharp pain in her left leg.
Looking down she saw that her skirt was afire. Screaming in terror
she ran down the street and in and out of three stores before
she could be stopped by two policemen. It is not believed that she
can recover.
(5) Compare the leads of the two following stories of the same
event, pointing out their merits and defects; then write a
new lead embodying the best points of each.
(1)
Princeton, N.J., Nov. 3—Governor Woodrow Wilson had a
narrow escape from serious injury at an early hour this morning
when the automobile in which he was returning home from Red
Bank ran into a rut in the main street leading into the little village
of Hightstown, throwing him with great force against the top of
the limousine, inflicting a painful cut in the top of his head.
When he appeared in his library this afternoon to meet many callers and the newspaper men the governor wore across the top of his head a broad plaster bandage, covering part of the scalp that had been shaved when the cut was dressed.
Captain "Silent Bill" McDonald, the Texas ranger traveling companion of the governor, received a severe jolt, but escaped any other injury than a bruise on his neck.
(2)
Princeton, N.J., Nov. 3—Gov. Woodrow Wilson wears a strip
of collodion and gauze across the top of his head covering a scalp
wound three inches long which he received early on Sunday in a
motor mishap on the way home from Red Bank, N.J. His automobile
struck a mound in the road and jolted him up against a
steel rib in the roof of the limousine car.
The wound is not serious and the democratic presidential nominee will fulfill his speaking engagements in Paterson and Passaic, N.J., on Monday.
At night the governor was in the parlor of his home the center of a group of friends. There was nothing in his manner to indicate that he had met with any mishap. He said he did not feel the wound in the slightest degree and had not even developed a headache from it.
"I guess I'm too hardheaded to be hurt," he said smilingly as he received the correspondents.
