News Writing Part 26

_BRYAN LOSES TEMPER_

Dallas, Texas, Oct. 2.--William J. Bryan, who formerly held a government job, has temper.

He took said temper out for an airing here to-day. He was riding from the railroad station to the hotel with a reception committee, of which a reporter happened to be a member.

"Do you ever intend to be a candidate for public office?" asked the reporter.

"I think, sir, if you had any sense you wouldn't have asked that question," replied the exponent of peace.

"I meant no impertinence."

"Well, it was impertinent. You wouldn't want to answer that question yourself, would you?"

"Sure I can answer it. I never intend to be a candidate for anything."

"Well, I don't think any friend of mine would try to get me to promise never to be a candidate again."

"I didn't ask you to promise."

"Well, that's all right," the ex-premier and the dove of peace returned.

Bryan was almost kissed again to-day.

B. F. Pace, a peace enthusiast, with outstretched arms and pursed-up lips, rushed upon the Nebraskan in the hotel lobby.

Bryan blushed coyly, clapped his hand over his mouth and dodged behind a six-foot Texan.

"Not too fast there!" he warned.

Friends intervened.

Pace has bushy whiskers.

_GUEST AT PARTY ROBBER_

The police are searching for a man known as "Jack Wallace," who is wanted for robbing W. G. Gaede, 444 West Grand Avenue, of jewelry valued at $350 at the Auditorium Hotel.

Gaede, who was celebrating New Year's eve, met Wallace and took him to the Auditorium. At 4 o'clock yesterday morning Wallace suggested that Gaede retire.

Wallace took Gaede to his room and soon afterward departed. When Gaede awoke his diamond stud, watch, chain, and charm were gone, also $20 in currency.

Mrs. Agnes Ackerman of the Morrison Hotel was robbed of a purse containing $50 while dining at the Hotel La Salle Sat.u.r.day night.

_B._ Put the following details in proper sequence for a suicide story:

Ira Hanc.o.c.k

Committed suicide (?) about 10 A.M., Monday.

Used to be wealthy.

Always gave waiters a good tip.

Never quit tipping even when he became poor.

Said tip was part of price of a meal.

Waiters always glad to see him.

Patronized cheap restaurants for the past three months.

Lived at 1919 Washington Avenue.

Age, 29.

Left room Monday morning with only a nickel and a bunch of keys.

Borrowed a quarter from Bob Cranston, downtown friend.

Went together for breakfast at Cozy Cafe, 18 Main Street.

Breakfast cost 25 cents each.

Hanc.o.c.k gave waiter five-cent tip.

Cranston called him a fool.

Hanc.o.c.k unmarried.

9:00 A.M., engaged a dressing room at Island Bathing house.

Bathing beach closed at midnight; Hanc.o.c.k's clothing still in the dressing room.

Only a bunch of keys in the pockets.

Fired from job at Snyder's Malt house, Sat.u.r.day night.

Taught girls' Sunday-school cla.s.s, West Side Baptist church, Sunday morning.

Body not found.

Lost money dealing in war stocks three months ago.

_CHAPTER IX_

_A._ Correct such of the following leads as need correction. Where the age of the person, his place of residence, or similar details necessary to an effective lead are lacking, supply them (paragraphs =100-120=).

1. Adam Schenk fell off the runway at the Fernholz Lumber Yard on Monday forenoon and landed on his back at a point near his kidneys on a stake on the wagon, breaking the stake off.

2. Rather than to put the Tuttle Press Company to an unnecessary expense of appropriating $1,000 that would do neither the city nor any particular individual a cent's worth of material good, and a.s.suming also that the city, by virtue of the fact that the company's original plant was erected on lines provided by the city's engineer, is in a measure responsible for present conditions, the city commissioners in conference with S. A.

Whedon of the Tuttle Press Company this morning decided not to proceed further in the matter of ordering removed the walls of a big addition to the plant now in process of construction.

3. Roaming hogs was the cause of the recent illness of Mr. T. N.

Davis. The hogs rooted under the wire fence surrounding his residence and in his effort to get them out he exerted himself beyond his endurance.

4. At an early hour Tuesday morning, as the beams of the rising sun were struggling to dispel the uncertainties of a winter night, the final summons came to Miss Ella O'Harrigan, our beloved librarian, to join the innumerable caravan that moves to the pale realms of shade.

5. Again the lure of Broadway, the craving to be among expensively clad men and women, and a longing to seem of more than actual importance, have resulted in a fall from a position of responsibility and trust to one facing the possibility of a long term of imprisonment.

This time it is a woman; good looking, possessing the knack of dressing smartly, capable and efficient, and less than 40 years old. For six years she had been head bookkeeper in Marbury Hall, an apartment hotel of the best cla.s.s, at 164 West Seventy-fourth Street. For more than two years of that time, according to the prosecuting officials, she has been putting cash belonging to the hotel into her own diamond-studded purse, whence it was transferred to the coffers of expensive dressmakers, theatres, and restaurants, particularly those which maintained dance floors.

Yesterday afternoon she was arrested, charged with grand larceny. She raised her hand to her mouth as the detective tapped her shoulder, and a few minutes later was taken to the Polyclinic Hospital, to be later transferred to Bellevue. She will recover from the poison and will have to face in court in four or five days the charges which she attempted to avoid by death....

6. Swept by a 33-mile gale, a fire which started in a three-story frame Greek restaurant on Appomattox Street this afternoon quickly spread to adjoining frame buildings in Hopewell, the "Wonder City," at the gates of the Du Pont Powder Company's plant, twenty miles from here, and at nightfall practically every business house, hotel, and restaurant in the mushroom powder town of 30,000 had been wiped out, the loss amounting to $1,000,000 or more.

7. One man, a bank messenger, was shot mortally and his a.s.sailant wounded, perhaps mortally, two other men narrowly missed death by shooting, and thousands of persons were terrorized by an attempted hold-up in the Fourteenth Street subway station at 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon, and by a chase which skirted Union Square, continued through a theatre arcade and ended blocks away.

8. As a result of an old quarrel between two citizens of Leroy, the melting snow-drifts on the streets of that city ran red with human blood, Wednesday. John M. Zellhoefer lay gasping his last breath on the sidewalk, with a fatal bullet wound through the midst of his body, while over him stood Francis Marion Dunkin, with smoking revolver in hand.

9. Nothing had been learned by the police last night to indicate that George de Brosa, who died early yesterday morning in Bellevue hospital after fatally wounding Allan Gardner, a bank messenger, and being shot by Walter F. Orleman, another bank messenger, in an attempted holdup of the two in the Fourteenth Street subway station Friday afternoon, had an accomplice.