Chapter X: Dick Meets a Fighting Preacher

A whole week at home! That was the order when Dick reached the office after his Porto Rico trip. It was necessary to give him a chance to write what he had in mind.

“The facts have got ’way ahead of me,” he said to the managing editor. “I don’t think I wasted any time, but there was so much to see that I couldn’t write fast enough.”

He did not say that he had sat up writing half the night, sometimes all night, after a day of sight-seeing; but that was the truth. His Mexican letters were still running, and he had a thick batch of letters ready from Porto Rico; but there were many more to write, and he was told to stay at home for a week to catch up.

“It’s the first real good chance I’ve had to see how you live here,” Dick said to his mother. “I’ve been kept so on the jump that the flat has been only a lodging-house for me, and not always even that. But think of a whole week! I’ll be at work at night when Darling comes home, and what talks we’ll have! And sometimes I can borrow time enough to take you and Florrie out to some place of amusement.”

“I don’t care very much for amusements, Dick,” his mother answered; “and Florrie has been out a good deal lately; not in the evenings, but going to matinées.”

“Oh, she has, has she?” Dick laughed. “I can see through a millstone when there’s a hole in it. Darling is busy in the evenings, but he is free in the afternoon for matinées. Ho! ho!”

Florrie entered the room at this moment and heard the mention of Darling’s name.

“What’s that you’re saying about Harry Darling, Dick?” she asked, blushing.

“I haven’t told anything, Florrie,” Mrs. Sumner hastily said; “but I don’t think you want to have any secrets from Dick, do you?”

“Of course I don’t,” Florrie answered, blushing very red. “There’s no secret about it, anyhow. Harry Darling and I are engaged, Dick.”

“Oh, I’m so glad, Florrie!” Dick exclaimed; and he sprang up and threw his arms around his sister and kissed her. “Darling is one of the best fellows in the world; one of the few men I know I’d be willing to see you marry. He’s as true as steel, Florrie.”

“Don’t you think I know it?” Florrie answered, still blushing. “But I was almost in hopes you’d be opposed to it. It’s so commonplace to have everybody think it just right. Mother thinks so, and of course Harry and I think so, and now you think so too. There ought to be some opposition, to add a little romance to the thing.”

“Romance in a flat!” Dick laughed; “the thing’s impossible. ‘Get your facts straight,’ as Dr. Goode would say, and never mind the romance.”

“Maybe I know more about Dr. Goode than you think,” Florrie answered. “Did they tell you in the office that Harry had been promoted? He is not an ordinary copy reader now, but Dr. Goode’s assistant, and helps to make up the paper, whatever that may be. I thought you all helped to make up the paper.”

“Is that so?” Dick exclaimed. “That’s good news, sure. Then he makes up all except the last page, which is the first page, Florrie. That’s a riddle for you. The doctor’s assistant makes up all but the first page of the paper, which is the last page made up, because it contains the latest and most important news. The doctor wouldn’t trust anybody else to make that up; and I just wish you could see him make it up some night when there’s fifteen columns of news to go into seven columns of space. The type is all spread out on galleys, you know, and the foreman reads the titles to him on account of the doctor’s bad eyes.”

“There’s just about three minutes, we’ll say, before the last form has to go down. ‘Train Robbery in Arizona, half a column,’ says the foreman.

“‘Kill it,’ says the doctor.

“‘Holman on Hard Money, column and a half,’ says the foreman.

“‘Hold Holman for to-morrow,’ says the doctor. And he takes his blue pencil and slashes away at the proofs, making a line out of a stickful and a stickful out of a column, till he squeezes a little of everything into his seven columns. It’s a beautiful sight, and away goes the form on time. And so Darling is really the doctor’s assistant! You don’t know how glad I am for both pieces of news, Florrie.”

Dick soon took possession of the little parlor and turned it into a workshop and kept his pen going till, as he said, it grew hot and he had to stop to let it cool. It was always a pen with him when he had a proper place to write, not a pencil; pencil copy looked too sloppy, he thought, and he did not like sloppy copy. He made it a rule to turn in every article ready for the printers--heading on, subheads in their proper places, every page edited, even the type marks put on. This habit did him many a good turn in after years.

When Darling came home that night Dick was still writing, but he stopped to help eat the late supper that always waited on the table.

“I hear great news of you, Darling!” he shouted as soon as Darling came in; “shake, old man.”

“Thank you,” Darling said without any embarrassment as he grasped Dick’s hand. “Then they’ve told you, have they? Well, Dick, I don’t wonder you’re a good fellow, to have such a sister.”

“Oh, put it the other way about,” Dick laughed; “that you don’t wonder she’s so good because she has such a brother.”

“I have some more news for you, too,” Darling went on as they attacked the supper. “Dr. Goode just told me to-night. The old man is going to send you on a trip down the Mississippi into the Southwest as soon as you have finished your Porto Rico stuff; and do you know I’m more than half-sorry, Dick.”

“Well, I don’t know.” He was hardly certain whether to feel sorry or glad. “I’ve got to be doing something, and I suppose I might as well be in the Southwest as anywhere.”

“Yes, as well there as anywhere, if you are away from home. But I’d rather have you at home, Dick, for several reasons. This sort of thing can’t go on always, you know, making these long trips; it never does, at any rate. A man makes a half-dozen or a dozen of them, and then they tire of his style or he tires of the traveling or for some other reason it comes to an end. You are making hay while the sun shines I’ll admit, but I’d like to see you begin to do something better, something more permanent.”

“Where do I have the time?” Dick interrupted. “I have hardly a minute to myself.”

“That’s just it,” Darling went on. “You have no time to yourself at all. Your Transport articles are copied everywhere, your syndicate articles have gone all over the country, and your Illustrated Weekly story was tip top; everybody said so. Indeed, for such a young fellow you have made yourself quite famous already--in a newspaper way. But after all, Dick, I’m more than half-inclined to think you would be better off if you were doing ordinary city work. Then you would have time to lay the foundation for better things.”

“I may be doing that now,” Dick replied. “Don’t you see, Darling, this sort of work is my only chance to sign my articles. I couldn’t sign a report of a fire in Canal Street, you know, or the flight of a bank cashier or any other city news.”

“That’s true,” Darling admitted. “Still, I think there are better things in store for you than signing newspaper articles, if you manage right and prepare yourself for them. Your style is very good indeed--for a newspaper writer; bright, I mean, and interesting and taking. But it lacks finish, Dick, and finish you can give it only by reading, which you have no time for as things go now. You should read Macaulay carefully, both the history and the essays, if only for the sake of the beautiful diction. And Scott and Thackeray you must read by all means. Of course you have read them, but I mean read them as a study, not merely for the sake of the story. Read them and study their methods of construction, their ways of carrying the reader gracefully from one point to another without sacrificing the interest, and of course their wonderful delineation of character.

“The construction of a novel was a natural gift to Scott and Thackeray, you will say; but it was not to them any more than it is to others. Their construction is art, not nature; but it is such high art that the art is concealed and seems to be nature. Then you must read Shakespeare, as a matter of course; it will stir you up when you feel sluggish. And Burns, Byron, Tennyson, and our best American poets. And above all things study the Bible. You read it for devotional reasons, I suppose, but I mean study it carefully as a literary work. Some of the books of the Bible contain the grandest examples of elegant, concise diction in the language. The knowledge always on tap in works of reference I suppose you have become familiar with in the office.”

“Oh, haven’t I!” Dick exclaimed. “I don’t see why they didn’t teach me about those things in school, but I never knew much about the standard works of reference till I went into the Transport office. The cyclopædias tell me something about almost any subject; if I want to know about any place in the world the Gazetteer tells me. I want to know the date of any important thing that has happened and there is Haydn’s Dictionary of Dates, or I want to quote a line from some good writer and I take down Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. Dodd’s Beauties of Shakespeare is almost equal to a knowledge of the plays and poems, and if I want to find any particular passage in Scripture the Concordance points it out to me in a moment. It’s a good education in itself to know where to find these things. Then the biographies tell me about all the prominent people of the past or present.”

“I see you’ve worked that mine pretty well!” Darling laughed. “But don’t expect to get a knowledge of English literature out of the works of reference. You don’t want to be a reporter or correspondent all your life, naturally, and it is safe to assume that you will not make a great poet, though you might try your hand at some verses, provided you don’t publish them. Then the three things nearest you are plays, novels, and short stories. There is a great deal of money in a successful play; and with two or three successes a writer’s fortune is made.”

“I hardly think I could make a play go,” Dick answered. “I have never taken as much interest in the theatre as a man ought who undertakes a play, though I am fond of dramatic situations in what I write. Between ourselves, Darling, I have sometimes thought of trying a novel. I could certainly do a better one than some I have read.”

“The young bird flies high!” Darling laughed. “You must not ask yourself whether you can do better than a poor novel, but whether you can do as well as a good one. Don’t expect to write a Rob Roy or a Vanity Fair at the first trial. And don’t be everlastingly wondering whether you have genius. ‘Genius is talent well worked,’ Henry Ward Beecher told me one day, and I believe it. You have some talent, and certainly you have the capacity for hard work, so you need not worry about genius. If you are going to try novel-writing, there is no harm in your traveling for a while, for you must become acquainted with different people and places or your hands will always be tied. Then, if all else fails, a situation in the office is always open to a man of your sort--inside the office, I mean; reading copy or the night city editorship, or something of that sort.”

“Oh, don’t mention it!” Dick exclaimed in horror. “A year ago I should have thought that grand; but now I have had a taste of the free life, of coming and going at will, of seeing new places and new people all the time, and I could not stand being shut up in an office, and having a desk that I must open at a fixed hour every day and close at another fixed hour, with a certain amount of unvarying drudgery between. I never could stand that now, Darling.”

“You can stand more than you think,” Darling retorted. “It is one of the drawbacks to a reporter’s life, that it is too free. It unfits him for any indoor occupation afterward. He becomes a sort of civilized wild Indian, a gypsy in evening clothes, and longs for his imaginary forest. But never mind. If you have determined to try a novel, keep your eyes open for good characters and good situations, and read whenever you have a spare moment. And don’t be too sure that you can write a good novel because you can write a good newspaper article. There is money and fame in novels if you can reach the top notch, but not otherwise.”

In his week of leisure, as he called it, Dick finished up all his Porto Rico matter by working every day and a large part of every night, and then came his instructions for the trip into the Southwest.

“We know what travel on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers meant in old times, before the days of railroads,” Mr. Harding told him. “I want you to tell the public what it is now. Go down to Pittsburgh and take a boat down the river. Go to Wheeling, to Cincinnati, and so on down the river at least to Memphis. There you can cross over to Arkansas and make a visit to Hot Springs which is one of the most picturesque towns in this country. Then you can take the Red River to New Orleans, and from there go on to Key West. Telegraph me when you reach Key West, and I will either bring you home or send you further instructions. I think you will find much material of interest. Take your time to it and do your best. The winter has been so mild that the rivers are still open.”

Dick climbed into a sleeping-car berth in Jersey City at nine o’clock in the evening, and at seven o’clock next morning he was in Pittsburgh.

“There’s article number one,” he said to himself as he stepped from the car. “‘A night in a sleeping-car.’ It’s so commonplace that people don’t write about it, but I think it will make a good story. There are always some curious characters in a sleeping-car, and they are always different.”

He walked down a long smoky street to the river and made inquiries in several shipping offices. Yes, there was a boat to sail for Wheeling that afternoon at five o’clock; the Crescent. No boats going farther than Wheeling, because the water was low. But he could go aboard when he liked and make himself comfortable. He paid his fare for a stateroom to Wheeling, for it was an all-night journey; and hunted up an express wagon to carry his trunk to the boat. No meals on the boat till supper time, he was told; but there were plenty of restaurants.

There were curious sights to see in Pittsburgh throughout the day, and there were the bridges to cross to Allegheny City, and the inclined railway to ride on, and many unaccustomed scenes by the riverside. He took mental note of them all; not because they interested him specially, but because it was his duty.

It was not at five o’clock that the Crescent started for Wheeling, but at nine; Ohio River boats are not express trains. Dick had books in his trunk, for he had thought over the conversation with Darling and made up his mind to become familiar with the best works of the best authors.

“What a solid old fellow Darling is!” he thought as he took out a volume of Tennyson and began to read. “And how much better he knows the world than I, though I am seeing so much more of it. I can see how a man’s ideas enlarge as he grows older. Now there was that telegraphing scheme of mine. I was determined to learn to send and receive a message. That was not many months ago, but my mind has changed about it entirely. I shouldn’t think of wasting time over it. Reading will be of much more use to me.”

At two o’clock in the morning, long after Dick had laid aside his book and gone to writing, he heard a man’s voice on the forward deck of the little stern-wheeler. He went out to see what it meant, and got his first clear idea of navigating the upper Ohio.

One man was on the lower deck, forward, taking soundings with a pole. Dick could not see him, but he heard his constant calling of the depths: “One half;” “One quarter;” “M-a-r-k O-n-e!” meaning a fathom and a half, a fathom and a quarter, one fathom. As fast as these calls came, the man on the upper deck repeated them to the pilot, who was in his house on the highest deck of all the “Texas”; and the pilot repeated them too, to make sure that he received them correctly. In a minute the figures became larger.

“Five nalf,” came from down below.

“Five.”

“Four nalf.”

“Four.”

“Is that fathoms?” Dick asked of the man on the upper deck.

“Not much!” the man answered. “That’s feet!”

Almost at the same instant the boat’s bottom grazed the sand, and there was a slight jar that brought Dick’s Porto Rico experience to mind. But it was over in a moment, and the boat went on.

“That was a tight squeeze!” the man exclaimed. “Sand bar; the river’s full of ’em. That’s the way we get it, when the water’s low. We can’t quite travel over a heavy dew with this boat, as some people say; but we’re all right as long as they give us three feet of water.”

It was about ten o’clock in the morning when the Crescent reached Wheeling, and she went no farther. Dick immediately began to make inquiries for another boat to carry him on to Cincinnati, but the prospects were discouraging.

“’Tain’t likely no boat can get through under two or three weeks,” he was told. “If there should come a heavy rain, there might be a boat in four or five days; but that’s doubtful.”

That would not do. Although he was to take his time, it would not be fair to waste a week or more in Wheeling. He inquired about railway trains, and finding that a train started for Cincinnati at two o’clock he had his trunk transferred to the railway station and bought a ticket.

How slow the boats seemed, when the train was under way! In ten minutes he was crossing the river by a bridge that the boat had gone under hours before it reached Wheeling. He was in Ohio now, and by seven o’clock he should be in Columbus; by one next morning, in Cincinnati.

There were few passengers in the train; in Dick’s car not more than three or four, and he settled himself comfortably in a corner and fell to reading. Suddenly he was roused, after an hour or two, by the stopping of the train and the pouring into every car of a crowd of people. It was a country town at which the train had stopped, and a fair was in progress. The people were going home from the fair.

In a minute or two Dick’s car, like all the other cars in the train, was packed with people. They not only occupied every seat, but crowded the aisles. There were a few women and children, but most of the newcomers were men; and Dick noticed that nearly all of the men were somewhat under the influence of liquor.

The train had not gone more than two or three miles after leaving the station before two of the men who stood in the aisle directly by the side of Dick’s seat began to quarrel, and from quarreling they soon went on to fighting. After a few blows with their fists they drew knives and began to lunge at each other. In a minute the friends of the two men joined in the fracas, some on one side and some on the other, and the fight became general. Many of the other men drew knives, several shots were fired, the women and children screamed, and the whole car was in an uproar. The worst of the fight was almost directly over Dick’s head.

“Gentlemen, you’ll have to stop this or get off the train!” the conductor shouted as he entered the car.

But he might as well have talked to the waves of the sea. Half the men were fighting, and the others seemed unconcerned. The conductor pulled the bell-rope to stop the train, and went out to summon the train hands to his assistance. Before he reached the door his foot slipped; and Dick, looking down, saw that he had slipped in a pool of blood. Somebody had been cut. One man had been pushed through a window and held so far out that Dick was afraid his head would strike a telegraph pole. Three or four seats just opposite Dick had been ripped out and lay overturned on the floor.

Just as the train stopped, the conductor entered the car at the other end, accompanied by several train hands. As he entered, a man who had been in the car all the way from Wheeling, stood up and spoke to him. Dick noticed that the man was very large; well over six feet high, and broad in proportion; and that he wore good black clothes.

“Conductor,” said the big man in a loud voice, “you must stop this riot. I call on you to stop the fighting in this car.”

“I can’t do it,” the conductor replied; “I haven’t men enough on the train to stop it.”

“Then call on your passengers!” the big man shouted; “you are entitled to call on the passengers to assist you.”

“Very well,” said the conductor, as though he would clinch the argument on the spot; “I call on you!”

The big man had not another word to waste. Evidently he was a man of action, and all he wanted was the summons from the conductor that gave him a legal right to participate. He pulled off his black coat and threw it upon the seat, laid his hat on top of it, pulled up his sleeves, and “sailed into” the crowd of fighters with the energy of a battering-ram.

It was a giant among pygmies. With every blow of the powerful fists one or two of the fighters went down. The Ohioans were so surprised at the single-handed onslaught that they hardly struck back. Down they went, one after another and in bunches, and the thud, thud of the sturdy blows came harder and faster. When the big man reached the door at Dick’s end of the car there was hardly a fighter left on his feet.

The big man had quelled the riot and made a score of sore heads, but he did not stop there. He gathered up the fellows who were nearest the door, two and three at a time, and threw them bodily out of the car. At this there was a wild rush for the opposite end by all who were able to walk, and in no time all the fighters were out. The conductor pulled the rope and the train started, leaving the rioters quarreling and fighting by the side of the track. The big man walked quietly back to his seat and put on his coat and hat.

“Well, that was the most beautiful piece of pugilism and pluck I ever saw in my life,” Dick said to himself. “To think of one unarmed man pitching into this whole crowd, where nearly every man had a knife in his hand, and thrashing the whole lot of them in a minute, just with his fists. Why, it was superb. He looks like an uncommon man, too; I must find out who he is.”

Dick went back to the seat adjoining the big man’s and spoke to him.

“You did that beautifully, sir,” he said. “I am a newspaper man, and if you have no objections I should be glad to know your name.”

The big man turned around with a pleasant smile on his face, and without showing the least sign of the recent conflict.

“Certainly, young man,” he said; “you are welcome to know my name, if you desire it. My name is Cook--Joseph Cook.”

“What!” Dick exclaimed before he could stop himself, “not the Rev. Joseph Cook, the celebrated clergyman and lecturer?”

“If you leave that word ‘celebrated’ out,” Mr. Cook replied, “I will own up to all the rest. Yes; I am the Rev. Joseph Cook, clergyman, lecturer.

“You see,” he went on, turning further around so that he faced Dick, “I am billed to lecture in Columbus at eight o’clock this evening. That was why I didn’t want the train delayed by that crowd of drunken ruffians. The conductor and his trainmen could have stopped the riot very readily if they had had any courage. But the quickest way was just to stop it myself, though I am afraid we are going to be late now, for we are more than an hour behind time.”

“Whew!” Dick said to himself, “this is news. I shall have to stop off at Columbus and telegraph this.” His old news instinct was aroused in a moment. He had not done any telegraphing to the Transport for some time, for such matters as letters from Mexico and Porto Rico go always by mail, not by telegraph. But for a man of the prominence of the Rev. Joseph Cook to put down such a riot single-handed, that was genuine news and must reach the office at once.

He continued the conversation with Mr. Cook and listened to some very interesting anecdotes, and talked with the conductor and several of the trainmen, and by the time they reached Columbus, not much before nine o’clock, he had well in mind the story that was soon to be written and telegraphed.

The car was in such disorder, with its bloodstains, broken glass, and torn-out seats, that at Columbus it was taken out of the train and sent to the railroad hospital for repairs. The lecture committee had learned by telegraph of the lateness of the train, and they had held the audience in the Opera House till Mr. Cook arrived. A carriage was waiting at the station for the lecturer, and he was driven at breakneck speed to the Opera House with Dick sitting by his side.

Dick soon had a seat at the reporter’s table, where he found every facility for writing, and where he immediately felt as much at home among the reporters of Columbus as though he had been in the Academy of Music in New York. But, like an experienced newspaper man, he told the other reporters nothing about the riot in the train. That was his own news, and too good to share with anybody.

It was not a report of the lecture that Dick wrote while Mr. Cook was speaking; it was an account of Mr. Cook’s adventure. And before the lecture was finished he slipped out and carried to the telegraph office a column-long account of the one-sided battle. By the time that the last of it reached the Transport office he was aboard the midnight train for Cincinnati.

“That’s a jolly beginning for a new trip!” he said to himself as he pulled the thick sleeping-car blankets over him. “If every day turns out as well I’ll be in luck.”