One day, then, I was handed a clipping concerning this proposed game that had been written the preceding day by another member of the staff and which was headed “Blood on the Moon.” It purported to narrate the preliminary mutterings and grumblings of those who were to take part in the contest. It was not so much an amusing picture as a news item, and I did not think very much of it; but since I had been warned by Williams that I was about to be called upon to produce the next day’s burst, and that it must be humorous, I was by no means inclined to judge it too harshly.... The efforts of one’s predecessor always appear more forceful as one’s own threaten to prove inadequate. A little later Wandell proceeded to outline to me most of the conditions which surrounded this contest. “See if you can’t get some fun into it. You must do it. Some one has to. I depend on you for this. Make us laugh,” and he smiled a dry, almost frosty smile. “Laugh!” I thought. “Good Lord, how am I to make anybody laugh? I never wrote anything funny in my life!” Nevertheless, being put to it for this afternoon (he had given me no other assignment, fancying no doubt that I might have a hard time with this), and being the soul of duty, I went to my desk to think it over. Not an idea came to me. It seemed to me that nothing could be duller than this, a baseball game between fat and lean men; yet if I didn’t write something it would be a black mark against me and if I did and it proved a piece of trash I should sink equally low in the estimation of my superior. I took my pencil and began scribbling a possible introduction, wondering how one achieved humor when one had it not. After writing aimlessly for a half-hour or so I finally re-examined the texts of my predecessors of previous days and then sought to take the same tack. Only, instead of describing the aspirations and oppositions of the two rival organizations in general terms, I assumed a specific interest and plotting on the part of certain of their chief officers, who even now, as I proceeded to assert and with names and places given in different parts of the city, were spending days and nights devising ways and means of outwitting the enemy. Thoughts of rubber baseball bats, baskets and nets in which flies might be caught, secret electric wiring under the diamond between the bases to put “pep” into the fat runners, seemed to have some faint trace of humor in them, and these I now introduced as being feverishly worked out in various secret places in order that the great game might not be lost. As I wrote, building up purely imaginary characteristics for each one involved (I did not know any of them), I myself began to grow interested and amused. It all seemed so ridiculous, such trash, and yet the worse I made it the better it seemed. At last I finished it, but upon re-reading it I was disturbed by the coarse horse-play of it all. “This will never get by,” I thought.