An Ambitious Reporter.

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1836, 12 April 1884, Page 6 (Supplement)

An Ambitious Reporter.

There is a Chicago newspaper reporter who 18 badly broke up. He is a regular attache of one of the greatest dailies in the world, and does good work, but he is ambitious. His line ia plain, ordinary, lock-stitch, stem-wind-ing reporting, but he is ambitious to rise higher. What he wants is to be sent off on some expedition, like Stanley, or away out West on Villard excursions, where he can lie about killing elk and buffalo, and catch raw fish in one spring and cook them in another without taking them off the hook. He yearns for some perilous adventure, where he is liable to liaro his coat-tail filled with bullets or boots, aud he bores the managing editor half to death asking for assignment to some special duty where ho can write something that will make the hair of the readers of the paper stand on end while they read it. The managing editor says, '• Get thee to a nunnery," and otherwise stands him off gently, or turns him away with a soft answer, such as " Go, soak your head," but he kept on yearning for excitement till about two weeks ago. He went to the managing editor with a scheme that would make the papers sell for 50 cents apiece. He said he wanted to go to some insane asylum, and spend a night in the violent ward, and listen to the howls of the incurable maniacs, and the clanking of chains, and write it up for the paper. The managing editor thought it would be a good chance to break the reporter of sucking eggs ; so he consented, and sent him to a "Wisconsin asylum with a letter to one of the surgeons, whom he knew, asking him to grant the representative what he desired. Then he wrote a private note to the doctor, telling liim to scare the life out of the reporter, and charge it to the concern. The reporter came to Wisconsin, and remained one night, hub the article has not appeared in the paper, and the reporter has not been seen at the newspaper office since. The surgeon had placed the reporter in one of the worst wards, in a room by himself, and locked him in, and told him he could hear plenty of noises. Then the surgeon called a big Welch attendant, and gave him a bottle filled with Hunyadi water, mixed with several kinds of mineral waters that taste like decayed eggs, and told the attendant that the newcomer was a oad case, and must have a teaspoonful of that medicine every half hour. It may be best to let tlie reporter tell the result. At

the press club he was telling a fellow-reporter what he went to "Wisconsin for, and the result. He said : " Well, the doc put me in a room that was padded, and had a crib in it, to sleep in, covered with a shutter which could be fastened down. When the koy turned in the lock I was sorry I came. The shrieks of the people near me raised my hair, and I wondered if I could stand it till morning. Suddenly a face appeared at the hole in my door, and the man told me to put my mouth up to the hole and take my medicine. I told him I didn't want any medicine, and he said it would be better for me to take it that way than to compel him to come in, as I would have to take it, and I told him to go to Gehenna with his medicine. He opened the door and came in, poured out the medicine in a spoon, and came up to me. I said I was no crazy man, and didn't need any medicine. I said I was a Chicago journalist, on special duty, and that if ho didn't go away I would cuff him, and I squared off ala Sullivan. He said he never knew a better year for Chicago journalists. The woods were full of them. But even a Chicago journalist mu3l take his medicine like a little man, and lie came for mo with the spoon. I knocked the spoon out oB his hand, and then lie took me around the body in some manner I couldn't explain, pinioned my arms, and before I knew it the medicine was down me. Great heavens, how it did taste. I can taste it now. He went out as calmly as could be, and I tried to find something to kill him with, but everything was screwed down to the floor. I thought he had made a mistake in the room, and was giving me medicine that belonged to another. How did I know but the medicine I was taking was intended for some woman in b id health ? I had not got over thinking about it, and , trying to spit it out, when the villain came again, and said it was time to have another dose. Then I thought he was some lunatic who had got possession of a key some way, and was practicing on me in his insane wandering about the corridor. I was afraid of him, but ho came in and tackled me, and I fought him the best I could, but he got mo down and poured the vile stuff down my neck and went out. I went to the door and yelled for the doctor, and the other poor creatures thought I was a new case, if they thought anything, for they yelled too. I got so I expected the muflled tread of that attendant every minute, and he came again and again. One time he put mo in a straightjacket, and got the stuff down me, and at another time he put me in the crib and locked me in, on my back, as helpless as an infant, and gave me the medicine. I tried every time he came in to reason w ith him and explain who I was, and convince him that I represented the greatest new spaper on earth, but he only smiled and said lie had no doubt of it. He said the only thing he wondered at was that I did not claim to bo General Grant. He said the most of them had an idea they were some great man, and he was surprised that I was contented to be a common journalist. I offered him a hundred-dollar order on the cashier of our newspaper if he would go and call the doctor, but he said the doctor was asleep. Well, I found that I had to take the medicine, and, after ho had choked it down me half a dozen times, I got so I would go to the door and take it through the hole, and I expected every time that the next dose would kill me. I passed the worst night any man ever passed, and about eight o'clock in the morning the doctor came and opened the door, smiling, and asked me what kind of a night I had. I told him not to mention it. When I told him about the fiend giving me thatjawf ul modicinc every fifteen minutes all night, he said the man must have made a mistake, as the medicine was intended for Queen Victoria, who occupied a room farther down the hall, and who hadn't been feeling well for several days. I got out of there alive, and while coming down on the cai'3 I got to thinking it over, and I believe the managing editor put up that job on me with the doctor. I shall investigate the matter, and, if I find it so, I shall sue the paper for fifty thousand dollars damages, and the State of Wisconsin for another fifty thousand. A hundred thousand dollars would do to start a country paper with." — PccJc's Sun.