sition and make better money at it
than by teaching or clerking.

Each trade, they say, has its tricks, and being a society reporter
is no exception. In towns of from one thousand to two thousand
inhabitants, the news that Mrs. X. is going to give a party spreads
rapidly by that system of wireless telegraphy that excels the
Marconi--neighborhood gossip. But in the larger towns it is not so
easy. In "our town," whenever there is a party the ice cream is
ordered from a certain confectioner. Daily he permitted us to see
his order book. If Mrs. Jones ordered a quart of ice cream we knew
that she was only having a treat for the family. If it were two
quarts or more, it was a party, and if it was ice cream in molds, we
knew a big formal function was on foot.

Society reporting is a fertile field, and for a long time I had been
thinking that society columns were too dull. My ideal of a newspaper
is that every department should be edited so that everyone would
read all the paper. I knew that men rarely read the social column.
One day a man said to me that he always called his wife his better
judgment instead of his better half. That appealed to me as
printable, but where to put it in the paper? Why not in my own
department? I did so. That night when the paper came out everyone
clamored to know who the man was, for I had merely written, "A man
in town calls his wife his better judgment instead of his better
half."

Then I decided to make the society department a reflection of our
daily life and sayings. In order to get these in I used the initials
of my title, "S.R." I never used names, but I always managed to
identify my persons.

As one might expect, I brought down a storm about my head. Many
persons took the hints for themselves when they were not so
intended, and there were some amusing results. For instance, when I
said in the paper that "a certain man in a down-town store has
perfect manners," the next day twelve men thanked me, and I received
four boxes of candy as expressions of gratitude.

There were no complaints about the society column being dull after
this; everyone read it and laughed at it, and it was quoted in many
exchanges. Of course, I was careful to hurt no one's feelings, but I
did occasionally have a little good-natured fun at the expense of
people who