The story of the Sun, New York, 1833-1918 / by Frank M. O'Brien.

364

364 THE STORY OF "THE SUN"

and the bloodhounds, but the reporter's brain would
not turn backward and go again through the processes
that made a great story. Hill's story, which is remembered by its head-" A Little Child in the Dark "-will
never be repeated-by Hill.
The tear-impelling article is the most difficult thing
for a good reporter to write or a bad reporter to avoid
trying to write. It might be added that good reporters
write a " sob story " only when it fastens itself on them
and demands to be written; and then they write the
facts and let the reader do the weeping. O'Malley's
story of the killing of Policeman Gene Sheehan, which
has been reprinted from the Sun by several text-books
for students of journalism, is good proof of this. Practically all of it-and it was a column long-was a
straightforward report of the story told by the policeman's mother. This is a part:
Mrs. Catherine Sheehan stood in the darkened parlor
of her home at 361 West Fifteenth Street late yesterday
afternoon and told her version of the murder of her son
Gene, the youthful policeman whom a thug named Billy
Morley shot in the forehead down under the Chatham
Square elevated station early yesterday morning.
Gene's mother was thankful that her boy hadn't killed
Billy Morley before he died, "because," she said, " I
can say honestly, even now, that I'd rather have Gene's
dead body brought home to me, as it will be to-night,
than to have him come to me and say, ' Mother, I had
to kill a man this morning.'
"G God comfort the poor wretch that killed the boy,"
the mother went on, " because he is more unhappy tonight than we are here. Maybe he was weak-minded
through drink. He couldn't have known Gene, or he
wouldn't have killed him. Did they tell you at the
Oak Street Station that the other policemen called Gene
' Happy Sheehan '? Anything they told you about him
is true, because no one would lie about him. He was
always happy, and he was a fine-looking young man.