The chess expert is turning a cabalistic cablegram from St. Petersburg into a detailed story of the contest between a couple of the masters of the game. The bowling man is writing a description, which may never see the light, of a desperate struggle between the Harlem Pin Kings and the Bensonhurst Alley Scorchers. H. L. Fitzpatrick is writing a golf story with such magnificent technique that Mandigo will not dare to cut a line out of it. A dozen reporters, great and small, are at the desks in the middle of the room, busy with pencils. In a side room three or four others, converts to the typewriter, are pounding out copy. In another room Riggs is dictating to a stenographer the day’s doings in political life. Four or five “rewrite men,” the “long wait” and his helpers, the “short waits,” are slipping in and out of the telephone-booths, taking and writing news articles from twenty points in the city where the Mulberry Street reporter, the police-station reporters, the Tenderloin man--who covers the West Thirtieth Street police-station, the Broadway hotels, and the theatrical district--and the Harlem man are still busy gathering news. From a room wisely distant comes the rattle of the telegraph. Half a dozen wires are bringing in the continent’s news. Half a dozen boys, spurred by their chief, Dan O’Leary, carry the typed sheets to the proper desks. The dramatic critic comes in and sits down at his desk to write two-thirds of a column about a first performance. The music critic has sent down a brief notice of the night’s opera. Most of the reporters finish their work and go out. One or two remain to write special articles for the Sunday papers. A sporting reporter is spinning a semi-fictional yarn of life in Chinatown. A police reporter is composing little classics of life in Dolan’s Park Row restaurant. At one o’clock there is a rumbling of the presses in the basement, and soon copies of the first edition come to the desks of the news-masters. Lord suggests to the night editor a shift of front-page articles. Clarke, his pencil flashing, marks in additions to the story of a late accident. A cub waits patiently for a discarded paper, to see whether his piece has got in. An older reporter, who wrote the story in the first column of the first page, does not look at his own work, but turns to the sporting page to read the racing entries for the next day--his day off. At 1.27 A.M. Clarke rises and goes home. At two o’clock Lord closes his desk. Most of the desk men disappear; the work is done. The night editor--Van Anda or the imperturbable Smith--remains at his desk, with the “long wait” reporter to bear him company. At half past three they also go, and the watchman begins to turn out the lights. Down below, the presses are tossing forth the product of a night’s work in the big, bare, old room.