That first day, however, I spent on tenterhooks, fully expecting to be “fired” at its end. I found a corner at the big reporters’ table, and, having seized some “copy” paper from the general pile, I sat down to write “From Methodism to Running a Saloon,” without the faintest idea of how to do it. A dozen reporters sat scribbling near me, but no one paid me the smallest attention. They came and went; at another table Cooper, the City Editor (anglice news-editor) issued the assignments; the editorial writers arrived and sat at their little desks apart; the roar and pandemonium were indescribable; the first edition was going to press, with McCloy in a dozen places at once, but chiefly watching the make-up over the shoulders of the type-setters in the back of the room.... I wrote on and on; I believed it was rather good; no one came to stop me, no one looked at my “copy” or told me what length was wanted; once or twice, McCloy, flashing by, caught my eye, but with a glance that suggested he didn’t know who I was, why I was there at all, or what I was writing.... The hours passed; the first edition was already out; the reporters were reading hurriedly their own work in print, delighted if it was on the front page; the space-men were measuring the columns to see how much they had earned; and the make-up for the second edition, out at noon, was being hastened on behind the buzzing machinery in the rear. By this time I must have written two columns at least, and I began to wonder. Perhaps I was to appear in the principal final edition at six o’clock! On the front page! The article, evidently, was considered important! The notion that I was making a fool of myself, being made a fool of, rather, also occurred to me. I wrote on and on ... it was hunger finally that stopped me. I was famished. I turned to an albino reporter next me, a mere boy, whose peculiarity had earned him the nickname “Whitey.” Was I allowed to go out for lunch? “Just tell Cooper you’re going,” he replied. “Come out with me,” he added, “if you’ve finished your story. I’m going in a moment.” I finished my “story” then and there, putting the circle with three dots in it which, he explained, meant _finis_ to the printers. “Just hand it in to Cooper, and we’ll get right out,” he said. I obeyed, Cooper taking my pile of “copy” with a grin, and merely nodding his head when I mentioned lunch. He was a young man with thick curly black hair, big spectacles that magnified his good-natured eyes, only slightly less rapid and electric than McCloy, but yet so unsure of himself that the reporters soon found him out--and treated him accordingly. I saw my precious “copy” shoved to one side of his desk, but I never saw it again, either in print or elsewhere. No mention was ever made of it. It was, doubtless, two columns of the dullest rubbish ever scribbled in that office.