[Footnote 19: From _The Making of an American_, by Jacob A. Riis.
Copyright, 1901, by The Outlook Co. Copyright, 1901, by The Macmillan Co.
By permission of Mrs. Jacob A. Riis and of the publishers.]
When at last I got well enough to travel, I set my face toward the east,
and journeyed on foot through the northern coal regions of Pennsylvania by
slow stages, caring little whither I went, and earning just enough by
peddling flat-irons to pay my way. It was spring when I started; the autumn
tints were on the leaves when I brought up in New York at last, as nearly
restored as youth and the long tramp had power to do. But the restless
energy that had made of me a successful salesman was gone. I thought only,
if I thought at all, of finding some quiet place where I could sit and see
the world go by that concerned me no longer. With a dim idea of being sent
into the farthest wilds as an operator, I went to a business college on
Fourth Avenue and paid $20 to learn telegraphing. It was the last money I
had. I attended the school in the afternoon. In the morning I peddled
flat-irons, earning money for my board, and so made out.
One day, while I was so occupied, I saw among the "want" advertisements in
a newspaper one offering the position of city editor on a Long Island City
weekly to a competent man. Something of my old ambition stirred within me.
It did not occur to me that city editors were not usually obtained by
advertising, still less that I was not competent, having only the vaguest
notions of what the functions of a city editor might be. I applied for the
job, and got it at once. Eight dollars a week was to be my salary; my job,
to fill the local column and attend to the affairs of Hunter's Point and
Blissville generally, politics excluded. The editor attended to that. In
twenty-four hours I was hard at work writing up my then most ill-favored
bailiwick. It is none too fine yet, but in those days, when every nuisance
crowded out of New York found refuge there, it stunk to heaven.
Certainly I had entered journalism by the back door, very far back at that,
when I joined the staff of the _Review_. Signs of that appeared speedily,
and multiplied day by day. On the third day of my employment I beheld the
editor-in-chief being thrashed down the street by an irate coachman whom he
had offended, and when, in a spirit of loyalty, I would have cast in my lot
with him, I was held back by one of the printers with the laughing comment
that that was his daily diet and that it was good for him. That was the
only way any one ever got any satisfaction or anything else out of him.
Judging from the goings on about the office in the two weeks I was there,
he must have been extensively in debt to all sorts of people who were
trying to collect. When, on my second deferred pay-day, I met him on the
stairs, propelled by his washerwoman, who brought her basket down on his
head with every step he took, calling upon the populace (the stairs were
outside the building) to witness just punishment meted out to him for
failing to pay for the washing of his shirts, I rightly concluded that the
city editor's claim stood no show. I left him owing me two weeks' pay, but
I freely forgive him. I think I got my money's worth of experience. I did
not let grass grow under my feet as "city editor." Hunter's Point had
received for once a thorough raking over, and I my first lesson in hunting
the elusive item and, when found, making a note of it.
Except for a Newfoundland pup which some one had given me, I went back over
the river as poor as I had come. The dog proved rather a doubtful
possession as the days went by. Its appetite was tremendous, and its
preference for my society embarrassingly unrestrained. It would not be
content to sleep anywhere else than in my room. If I put it out in the
yard, it forthwith organized a search for me in which the entire
neighborhood was compelled to take part, willy-nilly. Its manner of doing
it boomed the local trade in hair-brushes and mantel bric-à-brac, but
brought on complications with the landlord in the morning that usually
resulted in the departure of Bob and myself for other pastures. Part with
him I could not; for Bob loved me. Once I tried, when it seemed that there
was no choice. I had been put out for perhaps the tenth time, and I had no
more money left to provide for our keep. A Wall Street broker had
advertised for a watch-dog, and I went with Bob to see him. But when he
would have counted the three gold pieces he offered into my hand, I saw
Bob's honest brown eyes watching me with a look of such faithful affection
that I dropped the coins as if they burned, and caught him about the neck
to tell him that we would never part. Bob put his huge paws on my
shoulders, licked my face, and barked such a joyous bark of challenge to
the world in general that even the Wall Street man was touched.
"I guess you are too good friends to part," he said. And so we were.
We left Wall Street and its gold behind to go out and starve together.
Literally we did that in the days that followed. I had taken to peddling
books, an illustrated Dickens issued by the Harpers, but I barely earned
enough by it to keep life in us and a transient roof over our heads. I call
it transient because it was rarely the same two nights together, for causes
which I have explained. In the day Bob made out rather better than I. He
could always coax a supper out of the servant at the basement gate by his
curvetings and tricks, while I pleaded vainly and hungrily with the
mistress at the front door. Dickens was a drug in the market. A curious
fatality had given me a copy of "Hard Times" to canvass with. I think no
amount of good fortune could turn my head while it stands in my bookcase.
One look at it brings back too vividly that day when Bob and I had gone,
desperate and breakfastless, from the last bed we might know for many days,
to try to sell it and so get the means to keep us for another twenty-four
hours.
It was not only breakfast we lacked. The day before we had had only a crust
together. Two days without food is not good preparation for a day's
canvassing. We did the best we could. Bob stood by and wagged his tail
persuasively while I did the talking; but luck was dead against us, and
"Hard Times" stuck to us for all we tried. Evening came and found us down
by the Cooper Institute, with never a cent. Faint with hunger, I sat down
on the steps under the illuminated clock, while Bob stretched himself at my
feet. He had beguiled the cook in one of the last houses we called at, and
his stomach was filled. From the corner I had looked on enviously. For me
there was no supper, as there had been no dinner and no breakfast.
To-morrow there was another day of starvation. How long was this to last?
Was it any use to keep up a struggle so hopeless? From this very spot I had
gone, hungry and wrathful, three years before when the dining Frenchmen for
whom I wanted to fight thrust me forth from their company. Three wasted
years! Then I had one cent in my pocket, I remembered. To-day I had not
even so much. I was bankrupt in hope and purpose. Nothing had gone right;
nothing would ever go right; and, worse, I did not care. I drummed moodily
upon my book. Wasted! Yes, that was right. My life was wasted, utterly
wasted.
A voice hailed me by name, and Bob sat up looking attentively at me for his
cue as to the treatment of the owner of it. I recognized in him the
principal of the telegraph school where I had gone until my money gave out.
He seemed suddenly struck by something.
"Why, what are you doing here?" he asked. I told him Bob and I were just
resting after a day of canvassing.
"Books!" he snorted. "I guess they won't make you rich. Now, how would you
like to be a reporter, if you have got nothing better to do? The manager of
a news agency down town asked me to-day to find him a bright young fellow
whom he could break in. It isn't much--$10 a week to start with. But it is
better than peddling books, I know."
He poked over the book in my hand and read the title. "Hard Times," he
said, with a little laugh, "I guess so. What do you say? I think you will
do. Better come along and let me give you a note to him now."
As in a dream, I walked across the street with him to his office and got
the letter which was to make me, half-starved and homeless, rich as
Croesus, it seemed to me. Bob went along, and before I departed from the
school a better home than I could give him was found for him with my
benefactor. I was to bring him the next day. I had to admit that it was
best so. That night, the last which Bob and I spent together, we walked up
and down Broadway, where there was quiet, thinking it over. What had
happened had stirred me profoundly. For the second time I saw a hand held
out to save me from wreck just when it seemed inevitable; and I knew it for
His hand, to whose will I was at last beginning to bow in humility that had
been a stranger to me before. It had ever been my own will, my own way,
upon which I insisted. In the shadow of Grace Church I bowed my head
against the granite wall of the gray tower and prayed for strength to do
the work which I had so long and arduously sought and which had now come to
me; the while Bob sat and looked on, saying clearly enough with his wagging
tail that he did not know what was going on, but that he was sure it was
all right. Then we resumed our wanderings. One thought, and only one, I had
room for. I did not pursue it; it walked with me wherever I went: She was
not married yet. Not yet. When the sun rose, I washed my face and hands in
a dog's drinking-trough, pulled my clothes into such shape as I could, and
went with Bob to his new home. That parting over, I walked down to 23 Park
Row and delivered my letter to the desk editor in the New York News
Association, up on the top floor.
He looked me over a little doubtfully, but evidently impressed with the
early hours I kept, told me that I might try. He waved me to a desk,
bidding me wait until he had made out his morning book of assignments; and
with such scant ceremony was I finally introduced to Newspaper Row, that
had been to me like an enchanted land. After twenty-seven years of hard
work in it, during which I have been behind the scenes of most of the plays
that go to make up the sum of the life of the metropolis, it exercises the
old spell over me yet. If my sympathies need quickening, my point of view
adjusting, I have only to go down to Park Row at eventide, when the crowds
are hurrying homeward and the City Hall clock is lighted, particularly when
the snow lies on the grass in the park, and stand watching them awhile, to
find all things coming right. It is Bob who stands by and watches with me
then, as on that night.
The assignment that fell to my lot when the book was made out, the first
against which my name was written in a New York editor's books, was a lunch
of some sort at the Astor House. I have forgotten what was the special
occasion. I remember the bearskin hats of the Old Guard in it, but little
else. In a kind of haze, I beheld half the savory viands of earth spread
under the eyes and nostrils of a man who had not tasted food for the third
day. I did not ask for any. I had reached that stage of starvation that is
like the still centre of a cyclone, when no hunger is felt. But it may be
that a touch of it all crept into my report; for when the editor had read
it, he said briefly:--
"You will do. Take that desk, and report at ten every morning, sharp."
That night, when I was dismissed from the office, I went up the Bowery to
No. 185, where a Danish family kept a boarding-house up under the roof. I
had work and wages now, and could pay. On the stairs I fell in a swoon and
lay there till some one stumbled over me in the dark and carried me in. My
strength had at last given out.
So began my life as a newspaper man.