Moon-Face, and Other Stories

“They made themselves indispensable,” was the terse response. “Make yourself indispensable.”

“But how can I, if I do not get the chance?”

“Make your chance.”

“But how?” she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a most unreasonable man.

“How? That is your business, not mine,” he said conclusively, rising in token that the interview was at an end. “I must inform you, my dear young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly that of instructor in a school of journalism.”

She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had conned the conversation over and over again. “But how?” she repeated to herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where she and her sister “bach’ed.” “But how?” And so she continued to put the interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. Edna’s secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity. And it was a slim little hoard by now.

“There’s Max Irwin,” Letty said, talking it over. “He’s a journalist with a national reputation. Go and see him, Ed. He knows how, and he should be able to tell you how.”

“But I don’t know him,” Edna objected.

“No more than you knew the editor you saw to-day.”

“Y-e-s,” (long and judicially), “but that’s different.”

“Not a bit different from the strange men and women you’ll interview when you’ve learned how,” Letty encouraged.

“I hadn’t looked at it in that light,” Edna conceded. “After all, where’s the difference between interviewing Mr. Max Irwin for some paper, or interviewing Mr. Max Irwin for myself? It will be practice, too. I’ll go and look him up in the directory.”

“Letty, I know I can write if I get the chance,” she announced decisively a moment later. “I just FEEL that I have the feel of it, if you know what I mean.”

And Letty knew and nodded. “I wonder what he is like?” she asked softly.

“I’ll make it my business to find out,” Edna assured her; “and I’ll let you know inside forty-eight hours.”

Letty clapped her hands. “Good! That’s the newspaper spirit! Make it twenty-four hours and you are perfect!”

* * *

“ – and I am very sorry to trouble you,” she concluded the statement of her case to Max Irwin, famous war correspondent and veteran journalist.

“Not at all,” he answered, with a deprecatory wave of the hand. “If you don’t do your own talking, who’s to do it for you? Now I understand your predicament precisely. You want to get on the Intelligencer, you want to get in at once, and you have had no previous experience. In the first place, then, have you any pull? There are a dozen men in the city, a line from whom would be an open-sesame. After that you would stand or fall by your own ability. There’s Senator Longbridge, for instance, and Claus Inskeep the street-car magnate, and Lane, and McChesney – ” He paused, with voice suspended.

“I am sure I know none of them,” she answered despondently.

“It’s not necessary. Do you know any one that knows them? or any one that knows any one else that knows them?”

Edna shook her head.

“Then we must think of something else,” he went on, cheerfully. “You’ll have to do something yourself. Let me see.”

He stopped and thought for a moment, with closed eyes and wrinkled forehead. She was watching him, studying him intently, when his blue eyes opened with a snap and his face suddenly brightened.

“I have it! But no, wait a minute.”

And for a minute it was his turn to study her. And study her he did, till she could feel her cheeks flushing under his gaze.

“You’ll do, I think, though it remains to be seen,” he said enigmatically. “It will show the stuff that’s in you, besides, and it will be a better claim upon the Intelligencer people than all the lines from all the senators and magnates in the world. The thing for you is to do Amateur Night at the Loops.”

“I – I hardly understand,” Edna said, for his suggestion conveyed no meaning to her. “What are the ‘Loops’? and what is ‘Amateur Night’?”

“I forgot you said you were from the interior. But so much the better, if you’ve only got the journalistic grip. It will be a first impression, and first impressions are always unbiased, unprejudiced, fresh, vivid. The Loops are out on the rim of the city, near the Park, – a place of diversion. There’s a scenic railway, a water toboggan slide, a concert band, a theatre, wild animals, moving pictures, and so forth and so forth. The common people go there to look at the animals and enjoy themselves, and the other people go there to enjoy themselves by watching the common people enjoy themselves. A democratic, fresh-air-breathing, frolicking affair, that’s what the Loops are.

“But the theatre is what concerns you. It’s vaudeville. One turn follows another – jugglers, acrobats, rubber-jointed wonders, fire-dancers, coon-song artists, singers, players, female impersonators, sentimental soloists, and so forth and so forth. These people are professional vaudevillists. They make their living that way. Many are excellently paid. Some are free rovers, doing a turn wherever they can get an opening, at the Obermann, the Orpheus, the Alcatraz, the Louvre, and so forth and so forth. Others cover circuit pretty well all over the country. An interesting phase of life, and the pay is big enough to attract many aspirants.

“Now the management of the Loops, in its bid for popularity, instituted what is called ‘Amateur Night’; that is to say, twice a week, after the professionals have done their turns, the stage is given over to the aspiring amateurs. The audience remains to criticise. The populace becomes the arbiter of art – or it thinks it does, which is the same thing; and it pays its money and is well pleased with itself, and Amateur Night is a paying proposition to the management.

“But the point of Amateur Night, and it is well to note it, is that these amateurs are not really amateurs. They are paid for doing their turn. At the best, they may be termed ‘professional amateurs.’ It stands to reason that the management could not get people to face a rampant audience for nothing, and on such occasions the audience certainly goes mad. It’s great fun – for the audience. But the thing for you to do, and it requires nerve, I assure you, is to go out, make arrangements for two turns, (Wednesday and Saturday nights, I believe), do your two turns, and write it up for the Sunday Intelligencer.”

“But – but,” she quavered, “I – I – ” and there was a suggestion of disappointment and tears in her voice.

“I see,” he said kindly. “You were expecting something else, something different, something better. We all do at first. But remember the admiral of the Queen’s Na-vee, who swept the floor and polished up the handle of the big front door. You must face the drudgery of apprenticeship or quit right now. What do you say?”

The abruptness with which he demanded her decision startled her. As she faltered, she could see a shade of disappointment beginning to darken his face.

“In a way it must be considered a test,” he added encouragingly. “A severe one, but so much the better. Now is the time. Are you game?”

“I’ll try,” she said faintly, at the same time making a note of the directness, abruptness, and haste of these city men with whom she was coming in contact.

“Good! Why, when I started in, I had the dreariest, deadliest details imaginable. And after that, for a weary time, I did the police and divorce courts. But it all came well in the end and did me good. You are luckier in making your start with Sunday work. It’s not particularly great. What of it? Do it. Show the stuff you’re made of, and you’ll get a call for better work – better class and better pay. Now you go out this afternoon to the Loops, and engage to do two turns.”

“But what kind of turns can I do?” Edna asked dubiously.

“Do? That’s easy. Can you sing? Never mind, don’t need to sing. Screech, do anything – that’s what you’re paid for, to afford amusement, to give bad art for the populace to howl down. And when you do your turn, take some one along for chaperon. Be afraid of no one. Talk up. Move about among the amateurs waiting their turn, pump them, study them, photograph them in your brain. Get the atmosphere, the color, strong color, lots of it. Dig right in with both hands, and get the essence of it, the spirit, the significance. What does it mean? Find out what it means. That’s what you’re there for. That’s what the readers of the Sunday Intelligencer want to know.

“Be terse in style, vigorous of phrase, apt, concretely apt, in similitude. Avoid platitudes and commonplaces. Exercise selection. Seize upon things salient, eliminate the rest, and you have pictures. Paint those pictures in words and the Intelligencer will have you. Get hold of a few back numbers, and study the Sunday Intelligencer feature story. Tell it all in the opening paragraph as advertisement of contents, and in the contents tell it all over again. Then put a snapper at the end, so if they’re crowded for space they can cut off your contents anywhere, reattach the snapper, and the story will still retain form. There, that’s enough. Study the rest out for yourself.”

They both rose to their feet, Edna quite carried away by his enthusiasm and his quick, jerky sentences, bristling with the things she wanted to know.

“And remember, Miss Wyman, if you’re ambitious, that the aim and end of journalism is not the feature article. Avoid the rut. The feature is a trick. Master it, but don’t let it master you. But master it you must; for if you can’t learn to do a feature well, you can never expect to do anything better. In short, put your whole self into it, and yet, outside of it, above it, remain yourself, if you follow me. And now good luck to you.”

They had reached the door and were shaking hands.

“And one thing more,” he interrupted her thanks, “let me see your copy before you turn it in. I may be able to put you straight here and there.”

Edna found the manager of the Loops a full-fleshed, heavy-jowled man, bushy of eyebrow and generally belligerent of aspect, with an absent-minded scowl on his face and a black cigar stuck in the midst thereof. Symes was his name, she had learned, Ernst Symes.

“Whatcher turn?” he demanded, ere half her brief application had left her lips.

“Sentimental soloist, soprano,” she answered promptly, remembering Irwin’s advice to talk up.

“Whatcher name?” Mr. Symes asked, scarcely deigning to glance at her.

She hesitated. So rapidly had she been rushed into the adventure that she had not considered the question of a name at all.