“Yes, sir,” Dick answered as he took the printed slip the editor handed him. He was a little disappointed, but of course he did not show it. Mr. Randall had told him that he would get only small jobs at first; but to write four or five lines for a day’s work seemed to him rather discouraging. “Well, my boy,” one of the older reporters said to him as he resumed his seat, “you’ve got your first assignment, have you? Let me see; oh, the stonecutters’ union;” and the man laughed; “you’ll get plenty of those little jobs till they find out what you can do. It’s by doing these little things well that you’ll gradually work into better ones.” “I suppose a man must begin at the beginning, sir,” Dick replied; and then wondered at what he had said, for he had never called himself a man before. But he sat down and began to study his slip carefully. At eight o’clock, so the slip said, the meeting was to be held; and there would be several addresses by prominent speakers. He laid it out in his mind just how his few lines should be worded. He was glad to think that it would take some little skill, at any rate, to condense a report of a meeting into four or five lines. It was not six o’clock yet when Dick left the office, and he had plenty of time for a leisurely walk up the Bowery. He had often seen the Bowery before, but never had it seemed so bright and busy to him. Instead of being merely a visitor now he had business there, business for a great newspaper, and he was actually a reporter going after information. The meeting proved to be very different from what Dick expected. The big hall was crowded, and the two factions in the union could not agree. One of the speakers was mobbed and injured, several shots were fired, the police rushed in with their clubs, and chairs were freely used as missiles. It was anything but a routine meeting. “Why!” Dick said to himself as he hurried back to the office after eleven o’clock, “in Russellville we’d half-fill the paper with such a thing. Even in New York it must be worth more than four or five lines. I think the city editor would want me to write a little more than that--say fifteen or twenty lines, as several people were hurt.” The whole appearance of the office was changed when he reached it. The day staff of editors had gone home and the night staff had taken their places, and the big room was brilliant and hot. Nobody paid any attention to him, for every one was busy. The night city editor’s only information about Dick’s work was in the single line in the assignment book: “Meeting of Stonecutters, Germania Hall--Sumner.” Dick sat down at his desk and wrote on the manilla office paper:--