Memoirs of an editor : fifty years of American journalism / Edward P. Mitchell.

THE DOOR TO THE COMPOSING-ROOM

87

Christine Nilsson, Parepa-Rosa, Adelaide Phillips,
Annie Louise Cary, either at the Globe or the Boston
Theatre. Emma Eames, one of the best of all, I remember
first as a fine big schoolgirl years after in Bath, her light
brown hair in twin pigtails neatly ribboned. In 1872 she
was a baby in Boston. I have pleasant memories of her
mother's apartments in Boylston Street close to the old
Public Library.
In the variegated reporting that came to me on the
Daily Advertiser I gained a fair idea of the technics of the
business. The spheres of duty ranged from the dismal
tours of the urban and suburban police stations, with an
occasional murder clew breaking the monotony, and the
perfunctory recording of the dreary municipal proceedings in all five of the Cambridges and in Lynn and Dedham and everywhere else, and the reporting of great railway disasters like that at Seabrook, up to those more
rewarding contacts with people and events really interesting to hear or witness.
I learned, also, that there is such a thing as being too
conventional in phraseology. About that time, either in
Boston or Worcester, there was a reporter who was inspired to write a novel of the emotional class. He was
quite successful till he came to the culminating passage
of love's declaration. It cannot be quoted exactly from
memory but it was something like this:
"Percy opened his arms and drew the lovely girl toward
him. Her head upon his breast, he gazed down into the
infinite depths of her cerulean eyes, pressed a passionate
kiss upon her fair cheek and proceeded to address her
substantially as follows."

I exercised my imagination, such as it was, in the
Advertiser's columns when opportunity occurred, and when
not in the Boston Courier, a Sunday newspaper of the old
type of marked literary quality maintained for years
by such contributors as Aldrich, Trowbridge, Shillaber,