difficult than the second,
whose purpose is to instruct or inform. The one derives its interest
from its appeal to the reader's curiosity, the other from its appeal to
the emotions. The emotional type attracts the reader through its appeal
to elemental instincts and feelings in men, as desire for food and life,
vain grief for one lost, struggle for position in society, undeserved
prosperity or misfortune, abnormal fear of death, stoicism in the face
of danger, etc. The following is by Frank Ward O'Malley, of the _New
York Sun_, a classic of this type of human interest story:

| =DEATH OF HAPPY GENE SHEEHAN= |
| |
|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.'" |
| |
|"God comfort the poor wretch that killed the boy," |
|the mother went on, "because he is more unhappy |
|to-night 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, |
|and he always had to duck his helmet when he walked |
|under the gas fixture in the hall, as he went out |
|the door. |
| |
|"He was doing dance steps on the floor of the |
|basement, after his dinner yesterday noon, for the |
|girls--his sisters, I mean--and he stopped