THE time was November, 1892. St. Louis, as I stepped off the train that
Sunday evening, after leaving Chicago in cold dreary state, seemed a
warmer clime. The air was soft, almost balmy; but St. Louis could be
cold enough too, as I soon discovered. The station, then at Twelfth and
Poplar (the new Union Station at Eighteenth and Market was then
building), an antiquated affair of brick and stone, with the tracks
stretching in rows in front of it and reached by board walks laid at
right angles to them, seemed unspeakably shabby and inconvenient to me
after the better ones of Chicago. St. Louis, I said to myself, was not
as good as Chicago. Chicago was rough, powerful, active; St. Louis was
sleepy and slow. This was due, however, to the fact that I entered it of
a Sunday evening and all its central portion was still. Contrasted with
Chicago it was not a metropolis at all. While rich and successful it was
a creature of another mood and of slower growth. I learned in time to
like it very much, but for the things that set it apart from other
cities, not for the things by which it sought to rival them.
But on that evening how dull and commonplace it seemed—how slow after
the wave-like pulsation of energy that appeared to shake the very air of
Chicago.
I made my way to a hotel called The Silver Moon, recommended to me by my
mentor and sponsor, where one could get a room for a dollar, a meal for
twenty-five cents. Outside of Joseph B. McCullagh, editor of the
_Globe-Democrat_, and Edmond O’Neill, former editor of the _Republic_ to
whom I bore a letter, there was no one to whom I might commend myself. I
did not care. I was in a strange city at last! I was out in the world
now really, away from my family. My great interest was in life as a
spectacle, this singing, rhythmic, mystic state in which I found myself.
Life, the great sea! Life, the wondrous, colorful riddle!
After eating a bite in the almost darkened restaurant of this hotel I at
once went out into Pine Street and stared at the street-cars, yellow,
red, orange, green, brown, labeled Choteau Avenue, Tower Grove,
Jefferson Avenue, Carondelet. My first business was to find the
_Globe-Democrat_ building, a prosperous eight-story brownstone and brick
affair standing at Sixth and Pine. I stared at this building in the
night, looking through the great plate glass windows at an onyx-lined
office, and finally went in and bought a Sunday paper.
I went to my room and studied this paper—then slept, thinking of my
coming introduction in the morning. I was awakened by the clangor of
countless cars. Going to the stationary washstand I was struck at once
by the yellowness of the water, a dark yellowish-brown, which deposited
a yellow sediment in the glass. Was that the best St. Louis could
afford? I asked myself in youthful derision. I drank it just the same,
went down to breakfast and then out into the city to see what I should
see. I bought a _Globe-Democrat_ (a Republican party paper, by the way:
an anachronism of age and change of ownership) and a _Republic_, the one
morning Democratic paper, and then walked to Sixth and Pine to have
another look at the building in which I was to work. I wandered along
Broadway and Fourth Street, the street of the old courthouse; sought out
the Mississippi River and stared at it, that vast river lying between
banks of yellow mud; then I went back to the office of the
_Globe-Democrat_, for it was nearing the time when its editor-in-chief
might choose to put in an appearance.
Joseph B. McCullagh (“Little Mac” of Eugene Field’s verse) was a short,
thick, aggressive, rather pugnacious and defensive person of Irish
extraction. He was short, sturdy, Napoleonic, ursine rather than
leonine. I was instantly drawn and thrown back by his stiff reserve. A
negro elevator boy had waved me along a marble hall on the seventh floor
to a room at the end, where I was met by an office boy who took in my
name and then ushered me into the great man’s presence. I found him at a
roll-top desk in a minute office, and he was almost buried in discarded
newspapers. I learned afterward that he would never allow these to be
removed until he was all but crowded out. I was racked with nervousness.
Whatever high estimate I had conceived of myself had oozed out by the
time I reached his door. I was now surveyed by keen gray Irish eyes from
under bushy brows.
“Um, yuss! Um, yuss!” was all he deigned to say. “See Mr. Mitchell in
the city room, Mr. Mitchell—um, yuss. Your salary will be—um—um—twenty
dollars to begin with” (he was chewing a cigar and mumbled his words),
and he turned to his papers.
Not a word, not a sign, that he knew I had ever written a line worth
while. I returned to the handsome city room, and found only empty desks.
I sat down and waited fully three-quarters of an hour, examining old
papers and staring out of the windows over the roofs until Mr. Mitchell
appeared.
Like his employer, he was thick-set, a bigger man physically but less
attractive. He had a round, closely-cropped head and a severe and
scowling expression. He reminded me of Squeers in _Nicholas Nickleby_. A
savage fat man—can anything be worse? He went to his desk with a quick
stride when he entered, never noticing me. When I approached and
explained who I was and why I was there he scarcely gave me a glance.
“The afternoon assignments won’t be ready till twelve-thirty,” he
commented drily. “Better take a seat in the next room.”
It was then only eleven-thirty, and I went into the next room and
waited. It was empty but deliciously warm on this chilly day. How
different from McEnnis, I thought. Evidently being called to a newspaper
by telegram was not to be interpreted as auguring that one was to lie on
a bed of roses.
A little bit afraid to leave for this hour, in case he might call, I
hung about the two windows of this room staring at the new city. How
wonderful it seemed, now this morning, after the quiet of the night
before, how strong and forceful in this November air. The streets and
sky were full of smoke; there was a clangor of street-car gongs below
and the rumble of endless trucks. A block or two away loomed up a tall
building of the newer order, twelve stories at least. Most of the
buildings were small, old family dwellings turned into stores. I
wondered about the life of the city, its charms, its prospects. What did
it hold for me? How long would I remain here? Would this paper afford me
any real advancement? Could I make a great impression and rise?
As I was thus meditating several newspaper men came in. One was a short
bustling fellow with a golden-brown mustache and a shock of curly brown
hair, whose name I subsequently learned was Hazard—a fitting name for a
newspaper reporter. He wore a fedora hat, a short cream-colored overcoat
which had many wrinkles about the skirts in the back, and striped
trousers. He came in with a brisk air, slightly skipping his feet as he
walked, and took a desk, which was nothing more than a segment of one
long desk fastened to the wall and divided by varnished partitions of
light oak. As soon as he was seated he opened a drawer and took out a
pipe, which he briskly filled and lighted, and then began to examine
some papers he had in his pockets. I liked his looks.
There sauntered in next a pale creature in a steel-gray suit of not too
new a look, who took a seat directly opposite the first comer. His left
hand, in a brown glove, hung at his side; apparently it was of wood or
stuffed leather. Later there arrived a negro of very intellectual
bearing, who took a seat next the second arrival; then a stout,
phlegmatic-looking man with dark eyes, dark hair and skin, which gave me
a feeling of something saturnine in his disposition. The next arrival
was a small skippity man, bustling about like a little mouse, and having
somewhat of a mousy look in his eyes, who seemed to be attached to the
main city editorial room in some capacity.
A curious company gradually filed in, fourteen or fifteen all told. I
gave up trying to catalogue them and turned to look out the window. The
little bustling creature came through the room several times, looked at
me without deigning to speak however, and finally put his head in at the
door and whispered to the attendant group: “The book’s ready.” At this
there was an immediate stir, nearly all of the men got up and one by one
they filed into the next room. Assuming that they were going to consult
the assignment book, I followed, but my name was not down. In Chicago my
city editor usually called each individual to him in person; here each
man was supposed to discover his assignment from a written page. I
returned to the reporters’ room when I found my name was not down,
wondering what I should be used for.
The others were not long gone before I was sought by the mouse—Hugh
Keller Hartung by name—who whispered: “The city editor wants to see
you”; and then for the second time I faced this gloomy man, whom I had
already begun not only to dislike but to fear. He was dark and savage,
in his mood to me at least, whether unconsciously so or not I do not
know. His broad face, set with a straight full nose and a wide
thin-lipped mouth, gave him a frozen Cromwellian outline. He seemed a
queer, unliterary type to be attached to so remarkable a journalist as
McCullagh.
“There’s been some trouble down at this number,” he said, handing me a
slip of paper on which an address was written. “A fight, I think. See if
you can find out anything about it.”
I hurried out, immensely relieved to get into the fresh air of the city.
I finally made my way to the place, only to find a vacant lot. Thinking
there might be some mistake, I went to the nearest police station and
inquired. Nothing was known. Fearing to fall down on my first
assignment, I returned to the lot, but could learn nothing. Gradually it
began to dawn upon me that this might be merely a trial assignment, a
bright idea of the frowning fat man, a bearings-finder. I had already
conceived a vast contempt for him, a stumbling-block in my path, I
thought. No wonder he came to hate me, as I learned afterward he did.
I wandered back through the city, looking at the strange little low
houses (it was the region between the river and North Broadway, about a
mile above the courthouse), and marveling at the darksome character of
the stores. Never in my life had I seen such old buildings, all brick
and all crowded together, with solid wood or iron shutters, modeled
after those of France from whence its original settlers came and having
something of the dourness of the poorer quarters of Paris about them,
and windows composed of very small panes of glass, evidences of the
influence of France, I am sure. Their interiors seemed so dark, so
redolent of an old-time life. The streets also appeared old-fashioned
with their cobblestones, their twists and turns and the very little
space that lay between the curbs. I felt as though the people must be
different from those in Chicago, less dynamic, less aggressive.
When I reached the office I found that the city editor, Mr. Mitchell,
had gone. The little mousy individual was at one of the parti-divisions
of the wall desk, near Mr. Mitchell’s big one, diving into a mass of
copy the while he scratched his ear or trifled with his pencil or jumped
mousily about in his seat.
“Is Mr. Mitchell about?” I inquired.
“No,” replied the other briskly; “he never gets in much before four
o’clock. Anything you want to know? I’m his assistant.”
He did not dare say “assistant city editor”; his superior would not have
tolerated one.
“He sent me out to this place, but it’s only a vacant lot.”
“Did you look all around the neighborhood? Sometimes you can get news of
these things in the neighborhood, you know, when you can’t get it right
at the spot. I often do that.”
“Yes,” I answered. “I inquired all about there.”
“It would be just like Tobe to send you out there, though,” he went on
feverishly and timidly, “just to break you in. He does things like that.
You’re the new man from Chicago, aren’t you—Dreiser?”
“Yes, but how did you know?”
“He said you were coming,” he replied, jerking his left thumb over his
shoulder. “My name’s Hartung, Hugh Keller Hartung.”
He was so respectful, almost fearsome in his references to his superior
that I could not help smiling. Now that I had my bearings, I did not
feel so keenly about Mr. Mitchell. He seemed dull.
“I suppose you’ll find St. Louis a little slower than Chicago,” he went
on, “but we have some of the biggest newspaper stories here you ever
saw. You remember the Preller Trunk Mystery, don’t you, and that big
Missouri-Pacific train robbery last year?”
I recalled both distinctly. “Is that so?” I commented, thinking of my
career in Chicago and hoping for a duplication of it here.
Heavy steps were heard in the hall just outside, and Mr. Hartung jumped
to his work like a frightened mouse; on the instant his head was fairly
pulled down between his shoulders and his nose pressed over his work. He
seemed to shrivel and shrink, and I wondered why. I went into the next
room just as Mr. Tobias Mitchell entered. When I explained that the
address he had given me was a vacant lot he merely looked up at me
quizzically, suspiciously.
“Couldn’t find it, eh? Somebody must have given me the wrong tip. Wait
in the next room. I’ll call you when I want you.”
I returned to that empty room, from which I could hear the industrious
pencil of Mr. Hartung and the occasional throat-clearing cough of Mr.
Mitchell brooding among his papers.
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