What would I not give that
I could unsay that now! Two of them died by their own hand, the
third in Bloomingdale. I had been making several attempts to get a
foothold on one of the metropolitan newspapers, but always without
success. That fall I tried the _Tribune_, the city editor of
which, Mr. Shanks, was one of my neighbors, but was told, with more
frankness than flattery, that I was "too green." Very likely Mr.
Shanks had been observing my campaign against the beats and thought
me a dangerous man in those days of big libel suits. I should have
done the same thing. But a few weeks after he changed his mind and
invited me to come on the paper and try my hand. So I joined the
staff of the _Tribune_ five years after its great editor had died,
a beaten and crushed man, one of the most pathetic figures in
American political history.
They were not halcyon days, those winter months of reporting for
the Tribune. I was on trial, and it was hard work and very little
pay, not enough to live on, so that we were compelled to take to
our little pile to make ends meet.
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