But there was always a bright
fire and a cheery welcome for me at home, so what did it matter?
It was a good winter despite the desperate stunts sometimes set me.
Reporters on general work do not sleep on flowery beds of ease. I
remember well one awful night when word came of a dreadful disaster
on the Coney Island shore. Half of it had been washed away by the
sea, the report ran, with houses and people. I was sent out to get
at the truth of the thing. I started in the early twilight and got
as far as Gravesend. The rest of the way I had to foot it through
snow and slush knee-deep in the face of a blinding storm, and got
to Sheepshead Bay dead beat, only to find that the ice and the tide
had shut off all approach to the island.
I did the next best thing; I gathered from the hotel-keepers of
the Bay an account of the wreck on the beach that lacked nothing
in vividness, thanks to their laudable desire not to see an
enterprising reporter cheated out of his rightful "space." Then I
hired a sleigh and drove home through the storm, wet through--"I
can hear the water yet running out of your boots," says my wife--wet
through and nearly frozen stiff, but tingling with pride at my
feat.
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