When I graduated from college in 1908 with a Bachelor of Science degree, I was assigned to work under James R. Price in the sports department. He was one of the best teachers I could have wished for. He primed me for the sports editor’s post which I later held on several New York dailies for a quarter of a century. I also had the fine guidance of three experts: Ernie Lanigan in baseball, George B. Underwood in track and field and general sports, and Charles F. Mathison in boxing. A year later we were joined by another baseball expert, Frederick G. Lieb. Although I liked my work, I had a strong hankering for commercial chemistry and matriculated in a postgraduate course at New York University. My hours on _The Press_ were long. I seldom reached home before one in the morning, yet for three months I spent my mornings at the University, bending over Bunsen burners, retorts and vials. One morning, exhausted, after a long tour at the paper, I mixed several chemicals that caused an explosion that blew me out of N.Y.U. I was asked to pack up and quit. So ended my budding career as a chemist. I still was undecided about continuing as a reporter, and since I had passed an examination to teach in the New York schools, I accepted an assignment as an instructor in a sixth grade class of girls in Public School No. 7 on the lower East Side of Manhattan. I worked there until school closed at three, then reported to _The Press_, where I seldom left before eleven in the evening. It was a gruelling grind I had mapped out for myself, and two months before summer vacation I handed in my resignation to Dr. Kottman, the school principal. I also held a license to teach during the summer in the playgrounds, and for two summers I was a supervisor of athletics in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, a tough neighborhood where my boxing knowledge came in handy. During that time I organized the first Fourth of July schoolboy track and field meet under the supervision of the Public Schools Athletic League. This later became an annual event for many years under the direction of the Park Playgrounds’ Board. * * * * * I have passed through three depressions and have a vivid recollection of each. Though I was only six years old when the nation’s businessmen went into mourning during the crash in President Grover Cleveland’s administration, I recall how my brothers and I sold newspapers to make both ends meet. However, despite hard times, six of us graduated from college. [Illustration: 3] MY WORK AS A REPORTER April 14, 1912. That’s a date I shall always remember. It was the day on which I received my baptism of fire as a big time reporter. It was the day of the sinking of the _Titanic_, then the world’s largest ship. The mishap to that gigantic craft which was hit by an iceberg and went down in mid-ocean with many world celebrities aboard was largely responsible for my promotion to the executive post of sports editor.