LIFE OF A REPORTER.

Patea Mail, Volume II, Issue 177, 20 December 1876, Page 1 (Supplement)

LIFE OF A REPORTER.

Tuk peculiar habits of the reporter of a daily newspaper—one of the busiest of animals—are worth making a note of. Tell the reporter that a horrible murder lias been committed in the next street, and the victim lies there “ bathed in gore,”- and he utters a hearty “ God bless you !” and dashes away at high pressure speed to make a full report of the happy circumstance. Inform him there is a fire in town, in which a woman and five children are consumed alive, and he hurries off in the highest glee, impatient to get the full particulars with the latest embellishments. If he knew that an assassination was to be committed in a certain corner at a given hour in the night, he’d be sure to be on the spot—not to prevent murder—oh no —but to be able to give “ a reliable version by an eye-witness,” with a minute and particular account of the surroundings, and a heart-rending description of each dying groan. He’d take all this down in a kind of penmanship peculiar to his class, which looks like warped rainbows and spoiled flashes of chain lightning. If his highly respectable father should ‘be hung for piracy on the high.seas, the enterprising reporter would be at the gallows, pencil in hand, and in the interval of his grief and tears would have ample time to take full short-hsnd notes of his parent’s last speech and dying confession. —New York Paper.