“That’s a wrinkle that I must tell the boys about,” Dick said to himself as he went out to finish gathering his facts. “Every reporter has trouble about getting his dispatches through sometimes, and a message to the superintendent opens the way in a hurry.” A few months before, when he was constantly in touch with the telegraph offices, he would have thought nothing of such an incident; but now he was glad to find that the old newspaper instinct was still strong within him; he was half-afraid that novel-writing and story-writing might have spoiled him for reporting. His next work was a large political meeting in the Metropolitan Opera House, at which some of the great statesmen of the country were the speakers. Several of the speeches were to be reported in full, and Dick expected to be put in charge of at least four or five reporters, as he had often been before. His own part was to write about a column and a half of introduction and description. But no other reporters were sent with him, and he soon found that a new order of things had begun in stenographic reporting. “It was a narrow escape I had,” he thought, “for at one time I had a strong notion to learn shorthand writing. Even when I began work on the Transport it was quite the fashion for the reporters to learn stenography. But I was a lucky fellow that I did not waste the time over it, for it has become a separate business entirely, and has nothing to do any more with real reporting. The new way is much better for the paper, too, because much quicker.” It was a pleasure to him to see how the system of verbatim reporting had improved. Instead of sending a half-dozen reporters to take the speeches desired, the Transport had simply sent for one of the new order of employing stenographers, and told him what speeches were desired in full. This man attended the meeting with a dozen messenger boys in waiting. He took all the notes himself, and as fast as he filled a page or two with notes a messenger boy rushed off with it to the stenographer’s office near Printing House Square, where a half-dozen young stenographers, all trained to read their employer’s notes, were ready to write them out in full. As fast as the pages of copy were ready they were sent over to the Transport office; and so rapidly was it all done that by the time the last speaker finished, the previous speeches were in type. More marvelous still, some of the earlier speakers, while still on the platform, were actually shown proofs of the speeches they had delivered an hour before. “I must be growing old!” Dick said to himself, “to see these changes going on in newspaper systems. Some day they may do away with reporters altogether. I hope my novels or funny sketches will begin to sell before that time comes.”