A foxhound scents the trail of his game and tracks it straight to a killing. A lapdog lacks this capability. In the same way, there are breeds of would-be writers who never can acquire a "nose for news," and others who, from the first day that they set foot in editorial rooms, are hot on the trail that leads to billboard headlines on the front page of a newspaper or acceptances from the big magazines.

Many writers who are hopelessly clumsy with words draw fat pay checks because they have a faculty for smelling out interesting facts. In the larger cities there are reporters with keen noses for news who never write a line from one year's end to another, but do all of their work by word of mouth over the telephone.

To the beginner such facts as these seem to indicate that any one can win in journalism who has the proper kind of nose. This conclusion is only a half-truth, but it is good for the novice to learn—and as soon as possible—that the first requisite toward "landing" in the newspapers and magazines is to know a "story" when he sees one.

In the slang of the newspaper shop a "story" means non-fiction. It may be an interview. It may be an account of a fire. It may be a page of descriptive writing for the Sunday magazine section. It may be merely a piece of "human interest."

As my own experience in journalism covers barely fifteen years, the writer would not be bold enough to attempt to define a "story" further than to state that it is something in which an editor hopes his public will be interested at the time the paper or magazine appears upon the newsstands. To-morrow morning or next month the same readers might not feel the slightest interest in the same type of contribution.

Timeliness of some sort is important, yet a "story" may have little to do with what in the narrower sense is usually thought of as "news"—such as this morning's happenings in the stock markets or the courts, or the fire in Main Street. The news interest in this restricted sense may dangle from a frayed thread. The timeliness of the contribution may be vague and general. We may not be able to do more than sense it. This is one reason why men of academic minds, who love exact definitions, never feel quite at ease when they attempt to deal with the principles of journalism.

We practical men, who earn a living as writers, feel no more at ease than the college professors when we attempt to deal with these principles. When we are cub reporters we are likely to conceive the notion that a "story" is anything startling enough, far enough removed from the normal, to catch public attention by its appeal to curiosity. Later, we perceive that this explains only half of the case. The other half may baffle us to the end. Instance the fact that a great many manuscripts sell to newspapers and magazines upon the merits of that mysterious element in writing known as "human interest." If a reward were offered for an identification of "human interest" no jury could agree upon the prize-winning description. A human interest story sometimes slips past the trained nose of a reporter of twenty years' experience and is picked up by a cub. It is something you tell by the scent.

This scent for the trail of a "story" may be sharpened by proper training, and one of the best places for a beginner to acquire such training—and earn his living in the meantime—is in a newspaper office. Yet nothing could be further from the present writer's intention than to advise all beginners in journalism to apply for jobs as reporters. Some of the most successful magazine contributors in America have never set foot inside of a newspaper plant except to pay a subscription to the paper or to insert a want ad for a chauffeur or a butler.

If you have nose sense for what the public is eager to read, newspaper experience can teach you nothing worth while unless it is a deeper knowledge of human nature. As a reporter you will view from behind the scenes what the people of an American community are like and catch some fleeting glimpses of the more unusual happenings in their lives. You may, or may not, emerge from this experience a better writer than you were when you went in. Your style may become simpler and more forceful by newspaper training. Or it may become tawdry, sloppy and inane.

"Newspapers," observed Charles Lamb, "always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment." That was true a hundred years ago, and appears to be just as true to-day.

Fortunately, the men who write the news get more out of the work than do their readers. The reporter usually can set down only a fraction of the interesting facts that he picks up about a "story." His work may be eternally disappointing to the public, but it is rarely half so dull to the man who does the writing.

No life into which the average modern can dip is so rich in interest for the first year or two as that of the reporter working upon general assignments. A fling at hobo life, ten voyages at sea and more than two years of army life (a year and a half of this time spent in trekking all over the shattered landscape of France) do not shake my conviction that the adventurer most to be envied in our times is the cub reporter enjoying the first thrills and glamors of breaking into print. There is a scent in the air, which, though it be only ink and paper, makes the cub's blood course faster the minute he steps into the office corridor; and as he mounts the stairs to the local room the throbbing of the presses makes him wonder if this is not literally the "heart of the city."

He makes his rounds of undertakers' shops, courtrooms, army and navy recruiting offices, railway stations, jails, markets, clubs, police and fire headquarters. He is sent to picnics and scenes of murders. He is one of the greenest of novices in literary adventure, but, quite like an H. G. Wells, he meets in his community "philosophers, scientific men, soldiers, artists, professional men, politicians of all sorts, the rich, the great."

He is underpaid and overworked. He has no time to give his writings literary finish; and, in the end, unless he develops either into a specialist or an executive, he may wear himself out in hard service and be cast upon the scrap heap. At first, the life is rich and varied. Then, after a while, the reporter finds his interest growing jaded. The same kind of assignment card keeps cropping up for him, day after day. He perceives that he is in a rut. He tells himself: "I've written that same story half a dozen times before."

Then is the time for him to settle himself to do some serious thinking about his future. Does he have it in him to become an executive? Or does he discover a special taste, worth cultivating, for finance, or sport, or editorial writing? If so, he has something like a future in the newspaper office.

But if what he really longs to do is to contribute to the magazines or to write books, he is at the parting of the ways. He should seize now upon every opportunity to discover topics of wide interest, and in his spare time he should attempt to write articles on these topics and ship them off to market.

He has laid the first solid foundation of successful freelancing, for if he has been able to survive as long as six months in the competition of the local room he has a nose for what constitutes a "story."

The next thing he has to learn is that an article for a magazine differs chiefly from a newspaper story in that the magazine must make a wider appeal—to a national rather than to a local interest. The successful magazine writer is simply a reporter who knows what the general public likes to read, and who has learned when and where and how to market what he produces. Timeliness is as important as ever, so he must look to his tenses. The magazine article will not appear until from ten days to six months or more after it is accepted. Some of our magazines begin making up their Christmas numbers in July, so he must learn to sweat to the tinkle of sleigh bells.

I wonder how many hundreds of ambitious newspaper reporters are at this very minute urging themselves to extra effort after hours and on their precious holidays and Sundays to test their luck in the magazine markets? The number must be considerable if my experience as a member of the editorial staff of a big national magazine allows me to make a surmise. I have read through bushels of manuscripts that had the ear marks of the newspaper office all over them. They were typed on the cheap kind of "copy paper" that is used only in "city rooms." The first sheet rarely had a title, for the newspaper reporter's habit is to leave headline writing to a "copy reader." Ink and dust had filled in such letters as "a" and "e" and "o." Most of the manuscripts were done with characteristic newspaper office haste, and gave indication somewhere in the text that the author had not the faintest notion of how far in advance of the date line the magazine had to make up its table of contents.

Many of these novices showed a promise in skill that might give some uneasy moments to our most prosperous magazine headliners. If only there were firm jaws back of the promise! These men had the nose for journalistic success, but that alone will not carry them far unless it is backed with a fighting jaw.

I look back sometimes to cub days and name over the reporters who at that time showed the greatest ability. Three of the most brilliant are still drudging along in the old shop on general assignments, for little more money than they made ten years ago. One did a book of real merit and the effort he expended upon it overcame him with ennui. Another made the mistake of supposing that he could pin John Barleycorn's shoulders to the mat. Another had no initiative. He is dying in his tracks.

Who now are rated as successes on the roll call of those cub reporter days? Not our geniuses, but a dozen fellows who had the most determination and perseverance. The men who won were the men who tried, and tried again and then kept on trying.

Mr. Dooley was quite right about opportunity: "Opporchunity knocks at every man's dure wanst. On some men's dures it hammers till it breaks down the dure and goes in an' wakes him up if he's asleep, an' aftherward it works fur him as a night watchman. On other men's dures it knocks an' runs away; an' on the dures of other men it knocks, an' whin they come out it hits thim over the head with an ax. But eviry wan has an opporchunity. So yez had better kape your eye skinned an' nab it before it shlips by an' is lost forevir."

The names on a big magazine's table of contents represent many varieties of the vicissitudes of fortune, but the prevailing type is not a lucky genius, one for whom Opporchunity is working as a night watchman. The type is a firm-jawed plugger. His nose is keen for "good stories," his eye equally alert to dodge the ax or to nab Opporchunity's fleeting coat-tails.