I received a letter of introduction to Major General Goethals, builder of the Canal, from his West Point classmate, Irvin Wardman, Editor-in-Chief and part owner of our paper. Upon my arrival in Panama, I stopped at the Washington Hotel, where General Goethals was quartered. Presenting my letter, I was ushered into the presence of an elderly and stately looking Army man, kind but firm in tone. We spoke of Mr. Wardman and of New York, and then he asked me if I would care to go on a tour of inspection of the Gatun Lock and up the Chagres River. I was delighted. The next morning we boarded a government motorboat, the _General Christie_. In addition to General Goethals, our party consisted of his Superintendent of Construction, several Army engineers and myself. It wasn’t long after we started that we heard a thunderous roar. To our right we saw a mountain of dirt drop into the Culebra Cut. A Japanese ship, the _Maru Tamuiri_, was caught in the rush and became wedged in between tons of earth and rocks. I had my camera with me and with a newspaperman’s instinct, I clicked and clicked and got a splendid set of photos of the great slide. It was a break that comes once in a lifetime for a newspaperman. There was no trip on the Chagres River that day. We returned to headquarters from where General Goethals sent his report to Washington, and I mailed a story to my Sunday magazine section and with it went the plates with the pictures of the slide. My photos and story reached the office of the New York _Press_ too late and to hold off another week wouldn’t do. John Hennessey, our Managing Editor, chanced to meet Carl Van Anda, the Editor of The New York _Times_, at the Press Club and offered the material to him. He was elated at the opportunity to obtain a first hand photo illustrated story from an eyewitness and two months later, when I returned from Panama to resume my work in New York, Mr. Hennessey explained why he had let the _Times_ use the photos. After congratulating me, he told me that Mr. Van Anda wanted to see me. I got in touch with him immediately and received a warm greeting. He thanked me, and as I was about to leave, he remarked: “By the way, that must have been an expensive trip. What did it cost you?” Imagine my surprise a few days later when I found a letter from him on my desk containing a check with this message: “This is in payment for the splendid pictures you sent from Panama.” That check paid for a good portion of my long trip. I’ve often told that story in discussing newspaper work with young boys whom I broke into the sports writing field. I should like to add that every office boy who worked for me is now an executive, or was one, on a New York newspaper.