Breaking into Park Row [excerpt]

     It was the first big story within my reach that I hadn’t mixed up with since I became a newspaper man, though I had another similar experience some years later when President McKinley was assassinated.
     At the time of that tragic occurrence I was city editor of the Evening World in New York. One afternoon I started for a ball game at the Polo Grounds, but the weather was so hot I gave up going to the game on the way uptown and went to my hotel at the entrance to Central Park and was soon fast asleep. When I awoke there were several notes that had been slipped under the door. I was wanted at the telephone booth in the hotel. In those days rooms were not supplied with individual telephones. I went to the office and learned that the World had been calling for me. The [161][162] operator rang for twenty minutes without getting a connection. “Busy,” “busy,” reported the exchange.
     “Anything happened?” I asked the operator.
     She shifted her gum and languidly drawled: “McKinley’s shot!”
     Good lord, the President assassinated and I fast asleep! The Nation pulsating with horror and an editor sleeping his wits away because the day was warm! When I got the connection with my office they told me a third extra had gone to press. There was nothing left for me to do but eat dinner, smoke a cigar, read the papers and go to bed. And that is what I did.