field. Conditions white. Way con- tested by only a small force. Question the Times
descrip- tion. Its correspondent is unaware of the facts.
"Great stuff!" cried Boyd excitedly. "Kuroki crosses the Yalu to-night and attacks. Oh,
we won't do a thing to the sheets that make up with Addison's essays, real estate
transfers, and bowling scores!"
"Mr. Vesey," said the m. e., with his jollying - which - you - should - regard - as - a -
favour manner, "you have cast a serious reflection upon the literary standards of the
paper that employs you. You have also assisted materially in giving us the biggest 'beat'
of the year. I will let you know in a day or two whether you are to be discharged or
retained at a larger salary. Somebody send Ames to me."
Ames was the king-pin, the snowy-petalled Marguerite, the star-bright looloo of the
rewrite men. He saw attempted murder in the pains of green-apple colic, cyclones in the
summer zephyr, lost children in every top- spinning urchin, an uprising of the down-
trodden masses in every hurling of a derelict potato at a passing automobile. When not
rewriting, Ames sat on the porch of his Brooklyn villa playing checkers with his ten-
year-old son.
Ames and the "war editor" shut themselves in a room. There was a map in there stuck
full of little pins that represented armies and divisions. Their fingers had been itching
for days to move those pins along the crooked line of the Yalu. They did so now; and in
words of fire Ames translated Calloway's brief message into a front page masterpiece
that set the world talking. He told of the secret councils of the Japanese officers; gave
Kuroki's flaming speeches in full; counted the cavalry and infantry to a man and a horse;
described the quick and silent building, of the bridge at Stuikauchen, across which the
Mikado's legions were hurled upon the surprised Zas- sulitch, whose troops were widely
scattered along the river. And the battle! -- well, you know what Ames can do with a
battle if you give him just one smell of smoke for a foundation. And in the same story,
with seemingly supernatural knowledge, he gleefully scored the most profound and
ponderous paper in England for the false and misleading account of the intended
movements of the Japanese First Army printed in its issue of the same date.
Only one error was made; and that was the fault of the cable operator at Wi-ju.
Calloway pointed it out after he came back. The word "great" in his code should have
been "gage," and its complemental words "of battle." But it went to Ames "conditions
white," and of course he took that to mean snow. His description of the Japanese army
strum, struggling through the snowstorm, blinded by the whirling, flakes, was thrillingly
vivid. The artists turned out some effective illustrations that made a hit as pictures of the
artillery dragging their guns through the drifts. But, as the attack was made on the first
day of May, "conditions white" excited some amusement. But it in made no difference
to the Enterprise, anyway.
It was wonderful. And Calloway was wonderful in having made the new censor believe
that his jargon of words meant no more than a complaint of the dearth of news and a
petition for more expense money. And Vesey was wonderful. And most wonderful of all
are words, and how they make friends one with another, being oft associated, until not
even obituary notices them do part.
On the second day following, the city editor halted at Vesey's desk where the reporter
was writing the story of a man who had broken his leg by falling into a coal-hole --
Ames having failed to find a murder motive in it.