“It’s an amusing story,” said Clarke to the reporter, “but they read the papers at police headquarters, and this policeman may be put on trial for not reporting the escape of the hobo. Suppose we drop this classic on the floor?” A telegraph messenger-boy once wrote a letter to the police commissioner, telling him how to break up the cadets (panders) of the East Side. A _Sun_ man found the lad and got an interesting interview with him. “Leave my name out, won’t you?” the messenger said to the reporter. “If you print it, I may lose my job.” He was told that his name was known in the _Sun_ office, but that the reporter would present his appeal. “Did you find the messenger?” Clarke asked the reporter on his arrival. The _Sun_ man replied that he had found him, and that the interview was interesting and exclusive. Before he had an opportunity to repeat the boy’s plea for anonymity, Clarke said: “Is it going to hurt the boy if we print his name? If it is, leave it out, and refer to him by a fictitious number.” Two reporters, one from the _Sun_ and one from another big daily, went one night to interview a famous man on an important subject. The _Sun_ man returned and wrote a brief story containing none of the big news which it had been hoped he might get. The other newspaper came out with some startling revelations, gleaned from the same interview. Mr. Lord showed the rival paper’s article to the _Sun_ reporter, with a mild inquiry as to the reason for the _Sun’s_ failure to get the news. “We both gave our word,” said the reporter, “that we would keep back that piece of news for three days, even from our offices.” “Son,” said Mr. Lord, “you are a great man!” That was the Lord phrase of acquittal. One of the big occurrences in the investigation of the life-insurance companies in 1905 was a report which was read to the investigating committee in executive session. Every newspaper yearned for the contents of the document. After the committee adjourned, a member of it whispered to a _Sun_ reporter: “There is a bundle of those reports just inside the door of the committee room. I should think that five dollars given to a scrub-woman would probably get a copy for you.” The _Sun_ man, knowing the value of the report, and not content to act on his own estimate of _Sun_ ethics, telephoned the temptation to the city editor, Mr. Mallon. “A _Sun_ man who would do that would lose his job,” was the instant decision. A couple of days after Stephen Tyng Mather, recently First Assistant Secretary of the Interior, went on the _Sun_ as a reporter, the city editor, Mr. Bogart, called him to his desk. “Mr. Mather,” said Bogart, “an admirer of the _Sun_ has sent me a turkey. Of course, I cannot accept it. Please take it to his house in Harlem and explain why; but don’t hurt his feelings.”