HOW TO WRITE SPECIAL FEATURE ARTICLES part 2

CHAPTER IV

APPEAL AND PURPOSE


ANALYZING THE SUBJECT. When from many available subjects a writer is
about to choose one, he should pause to consider its possibilities
before beginning to write. It is not enough to say, "This is a good
subject; I believe that I can write an article on it." He needs to look
at the topic from every angle. He ought to ask himself, "How widespread
is the interest in my subject? How much will it appeal to the average
individual? What phases of it are likely to have the greatest interest
for the greatest number of persons?" To answer these questions he must
review the basic sources of pleasure and satisfaction.

WHAT INTERESTS READERS. To interest readers is obviously the prime
object in all popular writing. The basis of interest in the news story,
the special feature article, and the short story is essentially the
same. Whatever the average person likes to hear and see, whatever gives
him pleasure and satisfaction, is what he wants to read about. In order
to test all phases of a given subject from this point of view, a writer
needs to keep in mind the fundamental sources of satisfaction.

Subjects and phases of subjects that attract readers may, for
convenience, be divided into the following classes, which, however, are
not mutually exclusive: (1) timely topics, (2) unique, novel, and
extraordinary persons, things, and events, (3) mysteries, (4) romance,
(5) adventure, (6) contests for supremacy, (7) children, (8) animals,
(9) hobbies and amusements, (10) familiar persons, places, and objects,
(11) prominent persons, places, and objects, (12) matters involving the
life, property, and welfare of others, (13) matters that affect the
reader's own success and well-being.

Timeliness. Though not absolutely essential, timeliness is a valuable
attribute of any subject. Readers like to feel that they are getting the
latest facts and the newest ideas, in special feature articles as well
as in the news. A subject need not be discarded, however, because it
does not make a timely appeal. It may have interest in other respects
sufficiently great to compensate for its lack of timeliness.

Many topics that at first glance seem quite unrelated to current
activities are found on closer examination to have some aspects that may
be brought into connection with timely interests. To a writer keenly
alive to everything that is going on in the world, most subjects will be
found to have some bearing on what is uppermost in men's minds. Emphasis
on that point of contact with current ideas will give to the article the
desired timeliness.

NOVELTY. When a person, object, or circumstance is unique, it arouses an
unusual degree of interest. The first person to accomplish something out
of the ordinary, the first event of its kind, the first of anything,
arrests attention.

Closely associated with the unique is the extraordinary, the curious. If
not absolutely the only one of its kind, a thing may still be
sufficiently unusual to excite an uncommon degree of interest. Novelty
has a perennial charm. Careful study of a subject is often necessary to
reveal the novel and extraordinary phase of it that can best be
emphasized.

MYSTERIES. The fascination for the human mind of whatever baffles it is
so well known that it scarcely needs elaboration. Mysteries, whether
real or fictitious, pique curiosity. Even the scholar and the practical
man of affairs find relaxation in the mystery of the detective story.
Real life often furnishes events sufficiently mysterious to make a
special feature story that rivals fiction. Unexplained crimes and
accidents; strange psychical phenomena, such as ghosts, presentiments,
spiritism, and telepathy; baffling problems of the scientist and the
inventor--all have elements of mystery that fascinate the average
reader.

ROMANCE. The romance of real life is quite as interesting as that of
fiction. As all the world loves a lover, almost all the world loves a
love story. The course of true love may run smooth or it may not; in
either case there is the romantic appeal. To find the romantic element
in a topic is to discover a perennial source of attraction for all
classes of readers.

ADVENTURE. Few in number are the persons who will not gladly escape
from humdrum routine by losing themselves in an exciting tale of
adventure. The thrilling exploits in real life of the engineer, the
explorer, the soldier of fortune, the pioneer in any field, hold us
spellbound. Even more commonplace experiences are not without an element
of the adventurous, for life itself is a great adventure. Many special
feature stories in narrative form have much the same interest that is
created by the fictitious tale of adventure.

CONTESTS FOR SUPREMACY. Man has never lost his primitive love of a good
fight. Civilization may change the form of the contest, but fighting to
win, whether in love or politics, business or sport, still has a strong
hold on all of us. Strikes, attempted monopolies, political revolutions,
elections, championship games, diplomacy, poverty, are but a few of the
struggles that give zest to life. To portray dramatically in a special
article the clash and conflict in everyday affairs is to make a
well-nigh universal appeal.

CHILDREN. Because we live in and for our children, everything that
concerns them comes close to our hearts. A child in a photo-drama or in
a news story is sure to win sympathy and admiration. The special feature
writer cannot afford to neglect so vital a source of interest. Practical
articles on the care and the education of children also have especial
value for women readers.

ANIMALS. Wild or tame, at large or in captivity, animals attract us
either for their almost human intelligence or for their distinctively
animal traits. There are few persons who do not like horses, dogs, cats,
and other pets, and fewer still who can pass by the animal cages at the
circus or the "zoo." Hunting, trapping, and fishing are vocations for
some men, and sport for many more. The business of breeding horses and
cattle, and the care of live stock and poultry on the farm, must not be
overlooked in the search for subjects. The technical aspects of these
topics will interest readers of farm journals; the more popular phases
of them make a wide general appeal.

HOBBIES AND AMUSEMENTS. Pastimes and avocations may be counted good
subjects. Moving pictures, theaters, music, baseball, golf, automobiles,
amateur photography, and a host of hobbies and recreations have enough
enthusiastic devotees to insure wide reading for special feature stories
about them.

THE FAMILIAR. Persons whom we know, places that we constantly see,
experiences that we have had again and again, often seem commonplace
enough, even when familiarity has not bred contempt; but when they
appear unexpectedly on the stage or in print, we greet them with the
cordiality bestowed on the proverbial long-lost friend. Local news
interests readers because it concerns people and places immediately
around them. Every newspaper man understands the desirability of
increasing the attractiveness of a news event that happens elsewhere by
rinding "local ends," or by giving it "a local turn." For special
feature stories in newspapers, local phases are no less important. But
whether the article is to be published in a newspaper or a magazine,
familiar persons and things should be "played up" prominently.

THE PROMINENT. Many persons, places, and objects that we have never seen
are frequently as real to us as are those that we see daily. This is
because their names and their pictures have greeted us again and again
in print. It is thus that prominent men and women become familiar to us.
Because of their importance we like to read about them. If a special
feature article in any of its phases concerns what is prominent, greater
attractiveness can be given to it by "playing up" this point, be it the
President of the United States or a well-known circus clown, Fifth
Avenue or the Bowery, the Capitol at Washington or Coney Island, the
Twentieth Century Limited or a Ford.

LIFE AND WELFARE OF OTHERS. Sympathy with our fellow beings and an
instinctive recognition of our common humanity are inherent in most men
and women. Nowhere is this more strikingly shown than in the quick and
generous response that comes in answer to every call for aid for those
in distress. So, too, we like to know how others feel and think. We like
to get behind the veil with which every one attempts to conceal his
innermost thoughts and feelings. Our interest in the lives and the
welfare of others finds expression in various ways, ranging from social
service and self-sacrificing devotion to gossip and secret confidences.
These extremes and all that lies between them abound in that "human
interest" upon which all editors insist.

This widespread interest in others affords to the writer of special
articles one of his greatest opportunities, not only for preparing
interesting stories, but for arousing readers to support many a good
cause. To create sympathy for the unfortunate, to encourage active
social service, to point the way to political reform, to show the
advantages of better industrial conditions, to explain better business
methods--all these are but a few of the helpful, constructive appeals
that he may make effectively.

He may create this interest and stir his readers to action by either one
of two methods: by exposing existing evils, or by showing what has been
done to improve bad conditions. The exposure of evils in politics,
business, and society constituted the "muck-raking" to which several of
the popular monthly magazines owe their rise. This crusading,
"searchlight" type of journalism has been largely superseded by the
constructive, "sunlight" type. To explain how reforms have been
accomplished, or are being brought about, is construed by the best of
the present-day journals to be their special mission.

PERSONAL SUCCESS AND HAPPINESS. Every one is vitally concerned about his
own prosperity and happiness. To make a success of life, no matter by
what criterion we may measure that success, is our one all-powerful
motive. Happiness, as the goal that we hope to reach by our success, and
health, as a prime requisite for its attainment, are also of great
importance to every one of us. How to make or save more money, how to do
our work more easily, how to maintain our physical well-being, how to
improve ourselves mentally and morally, how to enjoy life more
fully--that is what we all want to know. To the writer who will show us
how to be "healthy, wealthy, and wise," we will give our undivided
attention.

Business and professional interests naturally occupy the larger part of
men's thoughts, while home-making is the chief work of most women.
Although women are entering many fields hitherto monopolized by men, the
home remains woman's peculiar sphere. The purchase and preparation of
food, the buying and making of clothing, the management of servants, the
care of children--these are the vital concerns of most women. They
realize, however, that conditions outside the home have a direct bearing
on home-making; and each year they are taking a more active part in
civic affairs. Matters of public health, pure food legislation, the milk
and the water supply, the garbage collection, the character of places of
amusement, the public schools, determine, in no small degree, the
success and happiness of the home-maker.

Since the dominant interests of men and women alike are their business
and their home, the special writer should undertake to connect his
subject as closely as possible with these interests. To show, for
example, how the tariff, taxes, public utility rates, price-fixing,
legislation, and similar matters affect the business and home affairs of
the average reader, is to give to these political and economic problems
an interest for both men and women far in excess of that resulting from
a more general treatment of them. The surest way to get the reader's
attention is to bring the subject home to him personally.

Of the importance of presenting a subject in such a manner that the
reader is led to see its application to himself and his own affairs, Mr.
John M. Siddall, editor of the _American Magazine_, has said:

Every human being likes to see himself in reading matter--just as he
likes to see himself in a mirror.

The reason so much reading matter is unpopular and never attracts a
wide reading public lies in the fact that the reader sees nothing in
it for himself. Take an article, we'll say, entitled "The Financial
System of Canada." It looks dull, doesn't it? It looks dull because
you can't quite see where it affects you. Now take an article
entitled "Why it is easier to get rich in Canada than in the United
States." That's different! Your interest is aroused. You wonder
wherein the Canadian has an advantage over you. You look into the
article to find out whether you can't get an idea from it. Yet the
two articles may be basically alike, differing only in treatment.
One bores you and the other interests you. One bores you because it
seems remote. The other interests you because the writer has had the
skill to translate his facts and ideas into terms that are personal
to you. The minute you become personal in this world you become
interesting.

COMBINING APPEALS. When the analysis of a topic shows that it possesses
more than one of these appeals, the writer may heighten the
attractiveness of his story by developing several of the possibilities,
simultaneously or successively. The chance discovery by a prominent
physician of a simple preventive of infantile paralysis, for instance,
would combine at least four of the elements of interest enumerated
above. If such a combination of appeals can be made at the very
beginning of the article, it is sure to command attention.

DEFINITENESS OF PURPOSE. In view of the multiplicity of possible
appeals, a writer may be misled into undertaking to do too many diverse
things in a single article. A subject often has so many different
aspects of great interest that it is difficult to resist the temptation
to use all of them. If a writer yields to this temptation, the result
may be a diffuse, aimless article that, however interesting in many
details, fails to make a definite impression.

To avoid this danger, the writer must decide just what his purpose is
to be. He must ask himself, "What is my aim in writing this article?"
and, "What do I expect to accomplish?" Only in this way will he clarify
in his mind his reason for writing on the proposed topic and the object
to be attained.

With a definitely formulated aim before him, he can decide just what
material he needs. An objective point to be reached will give his
article direction and will help him to stick to his subject.
Furthermore, by getting his aim clearly in mind, he will have the means
of determining, when the story is completed, whether or not he has
accomplished what he set out to do.

In selecting material, in developing the article, and in testing the
completed product, therefore, it is important to have a definitely
formulated purpose.

THREE GENERAL AIMS. Every special article should accomplish one of three
general aims: it should (1) entertain, or (2) inform, or (3) give
practical guidance.

The same subject and the same material may sometimes be so treated as to
accomplish any one of these three purposes. If the writer's aim is
merely to help readers pass a leisure hour pleasantly, he will "play up"
those aspects of a topic that will afford entertainment and little or
nothing else. If he desires to supply information that will add to the
reader's stock of knowledge, he will present his facts in a manner
calculated to make his readers remember what he has told them. If he
proposes to give information that can be applied by readers to their own
activities, he must include those details that are necessary to any one
who desires to make practical use of the information.

When, for example, a writer is about to prepare an article, based on
experience, about keeping bees on a small suburban place, he will find
that he may write his story in any one of three ways. The difficulties
experienced by the amateur bee-keeper in trying to handle bees in a
small garden could be treated humorously with no other purpose than to
amuse. Or the keeping of bees under such circumstances might be
described as an interesting example of enterprise on the part of a city
man living in the suburbs. Or, in order to show other men and women
similarly situated just how to keep bees, the writer might explain
exactly what any person would need to know to attain success in such a
venture. Just as the purpose of these articles would vary, so the
material and the point of view would differ.

ENTERTAINING ARTICLES. To furnish wholesome entertainment is a perfectly
legitimate end in special feature writing. There is no reason why the
humor, the pathos, the romance, the adventure, and mystery in life
should not be presented in special feature stories for our entertainment
and amusement, just as they are presented for the same purpose in the
short story, the drama, and the photo-play. Many readers find special
feature stories with real persons, real places, and real circumstances,
more entertaining than fiction. A writer with the ability to see the
comedies and the tragedies in the events constantly happening about him,
or frequently reported in the press, will never lack for subjects and
material.

WHOLESOME ENTERTAINMENT. The effect of entertaining stories on the ideas
and ideals of readers ought not to be overlooked. According to the best
journalistic standards, nothing should be printed that will exert a
demoralizing or unwholesome influence. Constructive journalism goes a
step further when it insists that everything shall tend to be helpful
and constructive. This practice applies alike to news stories and to
special articles.

These standards do not necessarily exclude news and special feature
stories that deal with crime, scandal, and similar topics; but they do
demand that the treatment of such subjects shall not be suggestive or
offensive. To portray violators of the criminal or moral codes as heroes
worthy of emulation; to gratify some readers' taste for the morbid; to
satisfy other readers by exploiting sex--all are alike foreign to the
purpose of respectable journalism. No self-respecting writer will lend
the aid of his pen to such work, and no self-respecting editor will
publish it.

To deter persons from committing similar crimes and follies should be
the only purpose in writing on such topics. The thoughtful writer,
therefore, must guard against the temptation to surround wrong-doers
with the glamour of heroic or romantic adventure, and, by sentimental
treatment, to create sympathy for the undeserving culprit. Violations of
law and of the conventions of society ought to be shown to be wrong,
even when the wrong-doer is deserving of some sympathy. This need not be
done by moralizing and editorializing. A much better way is to
emphasize, as the results of wrong-doing, not only legal punishment and
social ostracism, but the pangs of a guilty conscience, and the disgrace
to the culprit and his family.

A cynical or flippant treatment of serious subjects gives many readers a
false and distorted view of life. Humor does not depend on ridicule or
satire. The fads and foibles of humanity can be good-naturedly exposed
in humorous articles that have no sting. Although many topics may very
properly be treated lightly, others demand a serious, dignified style.

The men and women whom a writer puts into his articles are not puppets,
but real persons, with feelings not unlike his own. To drag them and
their personal affairs from the privacy to which they are entitled, and
to give them undesired and needless publicity, for the sake of affording
entertainment to others, often subjects them to great humiliation and
suffering. The fact that a man, woman, or child has figured in the day's
news does not necessarily mean that a writer is entitled to exploit such
a person's private affairs. He must discriminate between what the public
is entitled to know and what an individual has a right to keep private.
Innocent wives, sweethearts, or children are not necessarily legitimate
material for his article because their husband, lover, or father has
appeared in the news. The golden rule is the best guide for a writer in
such cases. Lack of consideration for the rights of others is the mark
neither of a good writer nor of a true gentleman. Clean, wholesome
special feature stories that present interesting phases of life
accurately, and that show due consideration for the rights of the
persons portrayed, are quite as entertaining as are any others.

INFORMATIVE ARTICLES. Since many persons confine their reading largely
to newspapers and magazines, they derive most of their information and
ideas from these sources. Even persons who read new books rely to some
extent on special articles for the latest information about current
topics. Although most readers look to periodicals primarily for new,
timely facts, they are also interested to find there biographical and
historical material that is not directly connected with current events.
Every special feature writer has a great opportunity to furnish a large
circle of readers with interesting and significant information.

In analyzing subjects it is necessary to discriminate between
significant and trivial facts. Some topics when studied will be found to
contain little of real consequence, even though a readable article might
be developed from the material. Other themes will reveal aspects that
are both trivial and significant. When a writer undertakes to choose
between the two, he should ask himself, "Are the facts worth
remembering?" and, "Will they furnish food for thought?" In clarifying
his purpose by such tests, he will decide not only what kind of
information he desires to impart, but what material he must select, and
from what point of view he should present it.

ARTICLES OF PRACTICAL GUIDANCE. The third general purpose that a writer
may have is to give his readers sufficiently explicit information to
enable them to do for themselves what has been done by others. Because
all persons want to know how to be more successful, they read these
"how-to-do-something" articles with avidity. All of us welcome practical
suggestions, tactfully given, that can be applied to our own activities.
Whatever any one has done successfully may be so presented that others
can learn how to do it with equal success. Special feature articles
furnish the best means of giving this practical guidance.

In preparing a "how-to-do-something" article, a writer needs to consider
the class of readers for which it is intended. A special feature story,
for example, on how to reduce the cost of milk might be presented from
any one of three points of view: that of the producer, that of the
distributor, or that of the consumer. To be practical for dairy farmers,
as producers of milk, the article would have to point out possible
economies in keeping cows and handling milk on the farm. To be helpful
to milk-dealers, as distributors, it would concern itself with methods
of lowering the cost of selling and delivering milk in the city. To
assist housewives, as consumers, the article would have to show how to
economize in using milk in the home. An informative article for the
general reader might take up all these phases of the subject, but an
article intended to give practical guidance should consider the needs of
only one of these three classes of persons.

In many constructive articles of practical guidance, the writer's
purpose is so successfully concealed that it may at first escape the
notice of the average reader. By relating in detail, for example, how an
actual enterprise was carried out, a writer may be able to give his
readers, without their realizing it, all the information they need to
accomplish a similar undertaking. When he analyzes such articles, the
student should not be misled into thinking that the writer did not have
the definite purpose of imparting practical information. If the same
material can be developed into an article of interesting information or
into one of practical guidance, it is desirable to do the latter and, if
necessary, to disguise the purpose.

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE. In order to define his purpose clearly and to keep
it constantly before him, a writer will do well to put down on paper his
exact aim in a single sentence. If, for example, he desired to write a
constructive article about an Americanization pageant held in his home
city on the Fourth of July, he might write out the statement of his aim
thus: "I desire to show how the Americanization of aliens may be
encouraged in small industrial centers of from 3000 to 20,000
inhabitants, by describing how the last Fourth of July Americanization
pageant was organized and carried out in a typical Pennsylvania
industrial town of 5000."

Such a statement will assist a writer in selecting his material, in
sticking to his subject, and in keeping to one point of view. Without
this clearly formulated aim before him, it is easy for him to dwell too
long on some phase of the subject in which he is particularly interested
or on which he has the most material, to the neglect of other phases
that are essential to the accomplishment of his purpose. Or, failing to
get his aim clearly in mind, he may jump from one aspect of the subject
to another, without accomplishing anything in particular. Many a
newspaper and magazine article leaves a confused, hazy impression on the
minds of readers because the writer failed to have a definite objective.




CHAPTER V

TYPES OF ARTICLES


METHODS OF TREATMENT. After choosing a subject and formulating his
purpose, a writer is ready to consider methods of treatment. Again it is
desirable to survey all the possibilities in order to choose the one
method best adapted to his subject and his purpose. His chief
consideration should be the class of readers that he desires to reach.
Some topics, he will find, may be treated with about equal success in
any one of several ways, while others lend themselves to only one or two
forms of presentation. By thinking through the various possible ways of
working out his subject, he will be able to decide which meets his needs
most satisfactorily.

EXPOSITION BY NARRATION AND DESCRIPTION. The commonest method of
developing a special feature article is that which combines narration
and description with exposition. The reason for this combination is not
far to seek. The average person is not attracted by pure exposition. He
is attracted by fiction. Hence the narrative and descriptive devices of
fiction are employed advantageously to supplement expository methods.
Narratives and descriptions also have the advantage of being concrete
and vivid. The rapid reader can grasp a concrete story or a word
picture. He cannot so readily comprehend a more general explanation
unaccompanied by specific examples and graphic pictures of persons,
places, and objects.

Narration and description are used effectively for the concrete examples
and the specific instances by which we illustrate general ideas. The
best way, for example, to make clear the operation of a state system of
health insurance is to relate how it has operated in the case of one or
more persons affected. In explaining a new piece of machinery the writer
may well describe it in operation, to enable readers to visualize it
and follow its motions. Since the reader's interest will be roused the
more quickly if he is given tangible, concrete details that he can
grasp, the examples are usually put first, to be followed by the more
general explanation. Sometimes several examples are given before the
explanatory matter is offered. Whole articles are often made up of
specific examples and generalizations presented alternately.

To explain the effects of a new anæsthetic, for example, Mr. Burton J.
Hendrick in an article in _McClure's Magazine_, pictured the scene in
the operating-room of a hospital where it was being given to a patient,
showed just how it was administered, and presented the results as a
spectator saw them. The beginning of the article on stovaine, the new
anæsthetic, illustrating this method of exposition, follows:

A few months ago, a small six-year-old boy was wheeled into the
operating theater at the Hospital for Ruptured and Crippled
Children, in New York City. He was one of the several thousand
children of the tenements who annually find their way into this
great philanthropic institution, suffering from what, to the lay
mind, seems a hopelessly incurable injury or malformation. This
particular patient had a crippled and paralyzed leg, and to restore
its usefulness, it was necessary to cut deeply into the heel,
stretch the "Achilles tendon," and make other changes which, without
the usual anesthetic, would involve excruciating suffering.
According to the attendant nurses, the child belonged to the "noisy"
class; that is, he was extremely sensitive to pain, screamed at the
approach of the surgeon, and could be examined only when forcibly
held down.

As the child came into the operating-room he presented an extremely
pathetic figure--small, naked, thin, with a closely cropped head of
black hair, and a face pinched and blanched with fear. Surrounded by
a fair-sized army of big, muscular surgeons and white-clothed
nurses, and a gallery filled with a hundred or more of the leading
medical men of the metropolis, he certainly seemed a helpless speck
of humanity with all the unknown forces of science and modern life
arrayed against him. Under ordinary conditions he would have been
etherized in an adjoining chamber and brought into the
operating-room entirely unconscious. This cripple, however, had
been selected as a favorable subject for an interesting experiment
in modern surgery, for he was to undergo an extremely torturous
operation in a state of full consciousness.

Among the assembled surgeons was a large-framed, black moustached
and black-haired, quick-moving, gypsy-like Rumanian--Professor
Thomas Jonnesco, dean of the Medical Department of the University of
Bucharest, and one of the leading men of his profession in Europe.
Dr. Jonnesco, who had landed in New York only two days before, had
come to the United States with a definite scientific purpose. This
was to show American surgeons that the most difficult operations
could be performed without pain, without loss of consciousness, and
without the use of the familiar anesthetics, ether or chloroform.
Dr. Jonnesco's reputation in itself assured him the fullest
opportunity of demonstrating his method in New York, and this
six-year-old boy had been selected as an excellent test subject.

Under the gentle assurances of the nurses that "no one was going to
hurt" him, the boy assumed a sitting posture on the operating-table,
with his feet dangling over the edge. Then, at the request of Dr.
Jonnesco, he bent his head forward until it almost touched his
breast. This threw the child's back into the desired position--that
of the typical bicycle "scorcher,"--making each particular vertebra
stand out sharply under the tight drawn skin. Dr. Jonnesco quickly
ran his finger along the protuberances, and finally selected the
space between the twelfth dorsal and the first lumbar vertebræ--in
other words, the space just above the small of the back. He then
took an ordinary hypodermic needle, and slowly pushed it through the
skin and tissues until it entered the small opening between the
lower and upper vertebræ, not stopping until it reached the open
space just this side of the spinal cord.

As the needle pierced the flesh, the little patient gave a sharp
cry--the only sign of discomfiture displayed during the entire
operation. When the hollow needle reached its destination, a few
drops of a colorless liquid spurted out--the famous cerebro-spinal
fluid, the substance which, like a water-jacket, envelops the brain
and the spinal cord. Into this same place Dr. Jonnesco now
introduced an ordinary surgical syringe, which he had previously
filled with a pale yellowish liquid--the much-famed stovaine,--and
slowly emptied its contents into the region that immediately
surrounds the spinal cord.

For a few minutes the child retained his sitting posture as if
nothing extraordinary had happened. Dr. Jonnesco patted him on the
back and said a few pleasant words in French, while the nurses and
assistants chatted amiably in English.

"How do you feel now?" the attending surgeon asked, after the lapse
of three or four minutes.

"All right," replied the boy animatedly, "'cept that my legs feel
like they was going to sleep."

The nurses now laid the patient down upon his back, throwing a
handkerchief over his eyes, so that he could not himself witness the
subsequent proceedings. There was, naturally, much holding of breath
as Dr. Virgil P. Gibney, the operating surgeon, raised his knife and
quickly made a deep incision in the heel of this perfectly conscious
patient. From the child, however, there was not the slightest
evidence of sensation.

"Didn't you feel anything, my boy?" asked Dr. Gibney, pausing.

"No, I don't feel nothin'," came the response from under the
handkerchief.

An operation lasting nearly half an hour ensued. The deepest tissues
were cut, the tendons were stretched, the incision was sewed up, all
apparently without the patient's knowledge.

Some types of articles, although expository in purpose, are entirely
narrative and descriptive in form. By relating his own experiences in a
confession story, for example, a writer may be able to show very clearly
and interestingly the dangers of speculations in stocks with but small
capital. Personality sketches are almost always narrative and
descriptive.

Many of the devices of the short story will be found useful in articles.
Not only is truth stranger than fiction, but facts may be so presented
as to be even more interesting than fiction. Conversation,
character-drawing, suspense, and other methods familiar to the writer of
short stories may be used effectively in special articles. Their
application to particular types of articles is shown in the following
pages.

SPECIAL TYPES OF ARTICLES. Although there is no generally recognized
classification of special feature articles, several distinct types may
be noted, such as (1) the interview, (2) the personal experience story,
(3) the confession article, (4) the "how-to-do-something" article, (5)
the personality sketch, (6) the narrative in the third person. These
classes, it is evident, are not mutually exclusive, but may for
convenience be treated separately.

THE INTERVIEW. Since the material for many articles is obtained by means
of an interview, it is often convenient to put the major part, if not
the whole, of the story in interview form. Such an article may consist
entirely of direct quotation with a limited amount of explanatory
material concerning the person interviewed; or it may be made up partly
of direct quotation and partly of indirect quotation, combined with the
necessary explanation. For greater variety it is advisable to alternate
direct and indirect quotations. A description of the person interviewed
and of his surroundings, by way of introduction, gives the reader a
distinct impression of the individual under characteristic conditions.
Or some striking utterance of his may be "played up" at the beginning,
to be followed by a picture of him and his surroundings. Interviews on
the same topic with two or more persons may be combined in a single
article.

The interview has several obvious advantages. First, the spoken word,
quoted _verbatim_, gives life to the story. The person interviewed seems
to be talking to each reader individually. The description of him in his
surroundings helps the reader to see him as he talks. Second, events,
explanations, and opinions given in the words of one who speaks with
authority, have greater weight than do the assertions of an unknown
writer. Third, the interview is equally effective whether the writer's
purpose is to inform, to entertain, or to furnish practical guidance.
Romance and adventure, humor and pathos, may well be handled in
interview form. Discoveries, inventions, new processes, unusual methods,
new projects, and marked success of any kind may be explained to
advantage in the words of those responsible for these undertakings.

In obtaining material for an interview story, a writer should bear in
mind a number of points regarding interviewing in general. First, in
advance of meeting the person to be interviewed, he should plan the
series of questions by which he hopes to elicit the desired information.
"What would my readers ask this person if they had a chance to talk to
him about this subject?" he must ask himself. That is, his questions
should be those that readers would like to have answered. Since it is
the answers, however, and not the questions, that will interest readers,
the questions in the completed article should be subordinated as much as
possible. Sometimes they may be skillfully embodied in the replies;
again they may be implied merely, or entirely omitted. In studying an
interview article, one can generally infer what questions the
interviewer used. Second, he must cultivate his memory so that he can
recall a person's exact words without taking notes. Most men talk more
freely and easily when they are not reminded of the fact that what they
are saying is to be printed. In interviewing, therefore, it is desirable
to keep pencil and paper out of sight. Third, immediately after leaving
the person whom he has interviewed, the writer should jot down facts,
figures, striking statements, and anything else that he might forget.

EXAMPLES OF THE INTERVIEW ARTICLE. As a timely special feature story for
Arbor Day, a Washington correspondent used the following interview with
an expert as a means of giving readers practical advice on
tree-planting:

ARBOR DAY ADVICE

WASHINGTON, April 1.--Three spadefuls of rich, pulverized earth will
do more to make a young tree grow than a 30-minute Arbor day address
by the president of the school board and a patriotic anthem by the
senior class, according to Dr. Furman L. Mulford, tree expert for
the department of agriculture.

Not that Dr. Mulford would abbreviate the ceremonies attendant upon
Arbor day planting, but he thinks that they do not mean much unless
the roots planted receive proper and constant care. For what the
Fourth of July is to the war and navy departments, and what Labor
day is to the department of labor, Arbor day is to the department of
agriculture.

While the forestry bureau has concerned itself primarily with trees
from the standpoint of the timber supply, Dr. Mulford has been
making a study of trees best adapted for streets and cities
generally. And nobody is more interested than he in what Arbor day
signifies or how trees should be chosen and reared.

"We need trees most where our population is the thickest, and some
trees, like some people, are not adapted to such a life," said Dr.
Mulford. "For street or school yard planting one of the first
considerations is a hardy tree, that can find nourishment under
brick pavements or granite sidewalks. It must be one that branches
high from the ground and ought to be native to the country and
climate. America has the prettiest native trees and shrubs in the
world and it is true patriotism to recognize them.

"For Southern states one of the prettiest and best of shade trees is
the laurel oak, and there will be thousands of them planted this
spring. It is almost an evergreen and is a quick growing tree. The
willow oak is another.

"A little farther north the red oak is one of the most desirable,
and in many places the swamp maple grows well, though this latter
tree does not thrive well in crowded cities.

"Nothing, however, is prettier than the American elm when it reaches
the majesty of its maturity and I do not believe it will ever cease
to be a favorite. One thing against it, though, is the 'elm beetle,'
a pest which is spreading and which will kill some of our most
beautiful trees unless spraying is consistently practised. China
berry trees, abundant in the South, and box elders, native to a
score of states, are quick growing, but they reach maturity too soon
and begin to go to pieces."

"What is the reason that so many Arbor day trees die?" Dr. Mulford
was asked.

"Usually lack of protection, and often lack of care in planting,"
was the answer. "When the new tree begins to put out tender rootlets
a child brushing against it or 'inspecting' it too closely will
break them off and it dies. Or stock will nip off the new leaves and
shoots and the result is the same. A frame around the tree would
prevent this.

"Then, often wild trees are too big when transplanted. Such trees
have usually only a few long roots and so much of these are lost in
transplanting that the large trunk cannot be nourished by the
remainder. With nursery trees the larger they are the better it is,
for they have a lot of small roots that do not have to be cut off.

"Fruit trees are seldom so successful as shade trees, either along
a street or road or in a yard. In the first place their branches are
too low and unless carefully pruned their shape is irregular. Then
they are subject to so many pests that unless constant care is given
them they will not bear a hatful of fruit a season.

"On the other hand, nut trees are usually hardy and add much to the
landscape. Pecan, chestnut, walnut and shaggy bark hickory are some
of the more popular varieties."

The first Arbor day was observed in Nebraska, which has fewer
natural trees than any other state. This was in 1872, and Kansas was
the second to observe the day, falling into line in 1875.
Incidentally Kansas ranks next to Nebraska in dearth of trees.

The Arbor day idea originated with J. Sterling Morton, a Nebraskan
who was appointed secretary of agriculture by Cleveland. Now every
state in the Union recognizes the day and New York, Pennsylvania,
New Jersey, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin and others have
gotten out extensive Arbor day booklets giving information
concerning trees and birds; most of them even contain appropriate
songs and poems for Arbor day programs.

How an interview combined with a description of a person may serve to
create sympathy for her and for the cause that she represents is shown
in the following article, which was published anonymously in the Sunday
magazine section of the _Ohio State Journal_. It was illustrated with
two half-tone portraits, one of the young woman in Indian costume, the
other showing her in street dress.

JUST LIKE POCAHONTAS OF 300 YEARS AGO

"_Oh, East is East and West is West,
And never the two shall meet_."


BUT they may send messengers. Hark to the words of
"One-who-does-things-well."

"I carry a message from my people to the Government at Washington,"
says Princess Galilolie, youngest daughter of John Ross, hereditary
King of the "Forest Indians," the Cherokees of Oklahoma. "We have
been a nation without hope. The land that was promised us by solemn
treaty, 'so long as the grass should grow and the waters run,' has
been taken from us. It was barren and wild when we received it
seventy years ago. Now it is rich with oil and cultivation, and the
whites coveted our possessions. Since it was thrown open to settlers
no Cherokee holds sovereign rights as before, when it was his
nation. We are outnumbered. I have come as a voice from my people to
speak to the people of the Eastern States and to those at
Washington--most of all, if I am permitted to do so, to lay our
wrongs before the President's wife, in whose veins glows the blood
of the Indian."

Only nineteen is this Indian princess--this twentieth century
Pocahontas--who travels far to the seats of the mighty for her race.

She is a tall, slim, stately girl from the foothills of the Ozarks,
from Tahlequah, former capital of the Cherokee Nation. She says she
is proud of every drop of Indian blood that flows in her veins. But
her skin is fair as old ivory and she is a college girl--a girl of
the times to her finger-tips.

"When an Indian goes through college and returns to his or her
people," she says with a smile, "they say, 'Back to the blanket!' We
have few blankets among the Cherokees in Tahlequah. I am the
youngest of nine children, and we are all of us college graduates,
as my father was before us."

He is John Ross 3d, Chief of the Cherokee Nation, of mingled Scotch
and Indian blood, in descent from "Cooweeskowee," John Ross I., the
rugged old Indian King who held out against Andrew Jackson back in
1838 for the ancient rights of the Five Nations to their lands along
the Southern Atlantic States.

She sat back on the broad window seat in the sunlight. Beyond the
window lay a bird's-eye view of New York housetops, the white man's
permanent tepee. Some spring birds alighted on a nearby telephone
wire, sending out twittering mating cries to each other.

"They make me want to go home," she said with a swift, expressive
gesture. "But I will stay until the answer comes to us. Do you know
what they have called me, the old men and women who are wise--the
full-bloods? Galilolie--'One-who-does-things-well.' With us, when a
name is given it is one with a meaning, something the child must
grow to in fulfillment. So I feel I must not fail them now."

"You see," she went on, lifting her chin, "it is we young
half-bloods who must carry the strength and honor of our people to
the world so it may understand us. All our lives we have been told
tales by the old men--how our people were driven from their homes by
the Government, how Gen. Winfield Scott's soldiers came down into
our quiet villages and ordered the Indians to go forth leaving
everything behind them. My great-grandfather, the old King
Cooweeskowee, with his wife and children, paused at the first
hilltop to look back at his home, and already the whites were moving
into it. The house is still standing at Rossville, Ga. Do you know
what the old people tell us children when we wish we could go back
there?" Her eyes are half closed, her lips compressed as she says
slowly, thrillingly: "They tell us it is easy to find the way over
that 'Trail of Tears,' that through the wilderness it is blazed with
the gravestones of those who were too weak to march.

"That was seventy years ago, in 1838. The Government promised to pay
amply for all it took from us, our homes and lands, cattle--even
furniture. A treaty was made solemnly between the Indians and the
United States that Oklahoma should be theirs 'as long as the grass
should grow and the waters run.'

"That meant perpetuity to us, don't you see?" She makes her points
with a directness and simplicity that should disarm even the
diplomatic suavity of Uncle Sam when he meets her in Washington.
"Year after year the Cherokees waited for the Government to pay. And
at last, three years ago, it came to us--$133.19 to each Indian,
seventy-eight years after the removal from Georgia had taken place.

"Oil was discovered after the Indians had taken the wilderness lands
in Oklahoma and reclaimed them. It was as if God, in reparation for
the wrongs inflicted by whites, had given us the riches of the
earth. My people grew rich from their wells, but a way was found to
bind their wealth so they could not use it. It was said the Indians
were not fit to handle their own money."

She lifts eyebrows and shoulders, her hands clasped before her
tightly, as if in silent resentment of their impotence to help.

"These are the things I want to tell; first our wrongs and then our
colonization plan, for which we hope so much if the Government will
grant it. We are outnumbered since the land was opened up and a mass
of 'sooners,' as we call them--squatters, claimers,
settlers--swarmed in over our borders. The Government again offered
to pay us for the land they took back--the land that was to be ours
in perpetuity 'while the grass grew and the waters ran.' We were
told to file our claims with the whites. Some of us did, but eight
hundred of the full-bloods went back forty miles into the foothills
under the leadership of Red Bird Smith. They refuse to sell or to
accept the Government money for their valuable oil lands. To appease
justice, the Government allotted them lands anyway, in their
absence, and paid the money for their old property into the banks,
where it lies untouched. Red Bird and his 'Night Hawks' refuse to
barter over a broken treaty.

"Ah, but I have gone up alone to the old men there." Her voice
softens. "They will talk to me because I am my father's daughter. My
Indian name means 'One-who-does-things-well.' So if I go to them
they tell me their heart longings, what they ask for the Cherokee.

"And I shall put the message, if I can, before our President's wife.
Perhaps she will help."

THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE ARTICLE. A writer's own experiences, given under
his name, under a pseudonym, or in anonymous form, can easily be made
interesting to others. Told in the first person, such stories are
realistic and convincing. The pronoun "I" liberally sprinkled through
the story, as it must be, gives to it a personal, intimate character
that most readers like. Conversation and description of persons, places,
and objects may be included to advantage in these personal narratives.

The possibilities of the personal experience story are as great as are
those of the interview. Besides serving as a vehicle for the writer's
own experiences, it may be employed to give experiences of others. If,
for example, a person interviewed objects to having his name used, it is
possible to present the material obtained by the interview in the form
of a personal experience story. In that case the article would have to
be published without the writer's name, since the personal experiences
that it records are not his own. Permission to present material in a
personal experience story should always be obtained from the individual
whose experiences the writer intends to use.

Articles designed to give practical guidance, to show readers how to do
something, are particularly effective when written in the first person.
If these "how-to-do-something" articles are to be most useful to
readers, the conditions under which the personal experience was
obtained must be fairly typical. Personal experience articles of this
type are very popular in women's magazines, agricultural journals, and
publications that appeal to business men.


EXAMPLES OF THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE STORY. The opportunities for
service offered to women by small daily newspapers are set forth in the
story below, by means of the personal experiences of one woman. The
article was published in the _Woman's Home Companion_, and was
illustrated by a half-tone reproduction of a wash drawing of a young
woman seated at her desk in a newspaper office.

"THEY CALL ME THE 'HEN EDITOR'"

THE STORY OF A SMALL-TOWN NEWSPAPER WOMAN

By SADIE L. MOSSLER

"What do you stay buried in this burg for? Why, look how you drudge!
and what do you get out of it? New York or some other big city is
the place for you. There's where you can become famous instead of
being a newspaper woman in a one-horse town."

A big city newspaper man was talking. He was in our town on an
assignment, and he was idling away spare time in our office. Before
I could answer, the door opened and a small girl came to my desk.

"Say," she said, "Mama told me to come in here and thank you for
that piece you put in the paper about us. You ought to see the
eatin's folks has brought us! Heaps an' heaps! And Ma's got a job
scrubbin' three stores."

The story to which she referred was one that I had written about a
family left fatherless, a mother and three small children in real
poverty. I had written a plain appeal to the home people, with the
usual results.

"That," I said, "is one reason that I am staying here. Maybe it
isn't fame in big letters signed to an article, but it's another
kind."

His face wore a queer expression; but before he could retort another
caller appeared, a well-dressed woman.

"What do you mean," she declared, "by putting it in the paper that I
served light refreshments at my party?"

"Wasn't it so?" I meekly inquired.

"No!" she thundered. "I served ice cream, cake and coffee, and that
makes two courses. See that it is right next time, or we'll stop the
paper."

Here my visitor laughed. "I suppose that's another reason for your
staying here. When we write anything about a person we don't have to
see them again and hear about it."

"But," I replied, "that's the very reason I cling to the small town.
I want to see the people about whom I am writing, and live with
them. That's what brings the rewards in our business. It's the
personal side that makes it worth while, the real living of a
newspaper instead of merely writing to fill its columns."

In many small towns women have not heretofore been overly welcome on
the staff of the local paper, for the small town is essentially
conservative and suspicious of change. This war, however, is
changing all that, and many a woman with newspaper ambitions will
now have her chance at home.

For ten years I have been what may be classified as a small town
newspaper woman, serving in every capacity from society reporter to
city and managing editor. During this time I have been tempted many
times to go to fields where national fame and a larger salary
awaited those who won. But it was that latter part that held me
back, that and one other factor: "Those who won," and "What do they
get out of it more than I?"

It is generally conceded that for one woman who succeeds in the
metropolitan newspaper field about ten fail before the vicissitudes
of city life, the orders of managing editors, and the merciless
grind of the big city's working world. And with those who succeed,
what have they more than I? They sign their names to articles; they
receive big salaries; they are famous--as such fame goes. Why is a
signed name to an article necessary, when everyone knows when the
paper comes out that I wrote the article? What does national fame
mean compared with the fact that the local laws of the "Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals" were not being enforced and
that I wrote stories that remedied this condition?

I began newspaper life as society reporter of a daily paper in a
Middle-Western town of ten thousand inhabitants. That is, I supposed
I was going to be society reporter, but before very long I found
myself doing police assignments, sport, editing telegraph, and
whatever the occasion demanded.

I suppose that the beginnings of everyone's business life always
remain vivid memories. The first morning I reported for work at
seven o'clock. Naturally, no one was in the front office, as the
news department of a small-town newspaper office is sometimes
called. I was embarrassed and nervous, and sat anxiously awaiting
the arrival of the city editor. In five minutes he gave me
sufficient instructions to last a year, but the only one I remember
was, "Ask all the questions you can think of, and don't let anyone
bluff you out of a story."

My first duty, and one that I performed every morning for several
years, was to "make" an early morning train connecting with a large
city, forty miles away. It was no easy task to approach strangers
and ask their names and destination; but it was all good experience,
and it taught me how to approach people and to ask personal
questions without being rude.

During my service as society reporter I learned much, so much that I
am convinced there is no work in the smaller towns better suited to
women. Any girl who is bright and quick, who knows the ethics of
being a lady, can hold this position 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 wouldn't mind it. Little personal paragraphs of this
sort must never be malicious or mean--if the paper is to keep its
friends.

Of all my newspaper experience I like best to dwell on the society
reporting; but if I were to advance I knew that I must take on more
responsibility, so I became city editor of another paper. I was
virtually managing editor, for the editor and owner was a politician
and was away much of the time. It was then that I began to realize
the responsibility of my position, to grapple with the problem of
dealing fairly both with my employer and the public. The daily life
with its varying incidents, the big civic issues, the stories to be
handled, the rights of the advertisers to be considered, the
adjusting of the news to the business department--all these were
brought before me with a powerful clarity.

When a woman starts on a city paper she knows that there are
linotypes, presses and other machinery. Often she has seen them
work; but her knowledge of "how" they work is generally vague. It
was on my third day as city editor that I realized my woeful
ignorance of the newspaper business from the mechanical viewpoint. I
had just arrived at the office when the foreman came to my desk.

"Say," he said, "we didn't get any stuff set last night. Power was
off. Better come out and pick out the plate you want to fill with."

What he meant by the power being off I could understand, and
perforce I went out to select the plate. He handed me long slabs of
plate matter to read. Later I learned that printed copies of the
plate are sent for selection, but in my ignorance I took up the
slabs and tried to read the type. To my astonishment it was all
backward, and I found myself wondering if it were a Chinese feature
story. Finally I threw myself on his mercy and told him to select
what he chose. As I left the composing-room I heard him say to one
of the printers: "That's what comes of the boss hiring a hen
editor."

Shortly after noon a linotype operator came to me with his hands
full of copy.

"If you want any of this dope in the paper," he said, "you'll have
to grab off a paragraph here and there. My machine's got a bad
squirt, and it'll take an hour or more to fix it."

Greek, all Greek! A squirt! I was too busy "grabbing off" paragraphs
to investigate; but then and there I resolved to penetrate all these
mysteries. I found the linotype operator eager to show me how his
machine works, and the foreman was glad to take me around and
instruct me in his department and also in the pressroom. I have had
trouble with printers since; but in the end they had to admit that
the "hen editor" knew what she was talking about.

There is a great cry now for woman's advancement. If the women are
hunting equality as their goal let them not seek out the crowded,
hostile cities, but remain in the smaller places where their work
can stand out distinctly. A trite phrase expresses it that a
newspaper is the "voice of the people." What better than that a
woman should set the tune for that voice?

Equality with men! I sit at my desk looking out over the familiar
home scene. A smell of fresh ink comes to me, and a paper just off
the press is slapped down on my desk.

"Look!" says the foreman. "We got out some paper today, didn't we?"

"_We_!" How's that for equality? He has been twenty years at his
trade and I only ten, yet he includes me.

When I am tempted to feel that my field is limited, my tools crude,
and my work unhonored and unsung, I recall a quotation I read many
years ago, and I will place it here at the end of the "hen editor's"
uneventful story.

Back before my mind floats that phrase, "Buried in this burg." If a
person has ability, will not the world learn it?

"If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or sing a
more glorious song than his neighbor, though he build his house in
the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door."

That a personal experience story may be utilized to show readers how to
do something is demonstrated in the following article taken from _The
Designer_. It was illustrated by a half-tone made from a wash drawing of
one corner of the burlap room.

A BEDROOM IN BURLAP

THE MOST SATISFACTORY ROOM IN OUR BUNGALOW

BY KATHERINE VAN DORN

Our burlap room is the show room of our bungalow. Visitors are
guided through the living-room, the bedroom, the sleeping-porch and
kitchen, and allowed to express their delight and satisfaction while
we wait with bated breath for the grand surprise to be given them.
Then, when they have concluded, we say:

"But you should see our burlap room!" Then we lead the way up the
stairs to the attic and again stand and wait. We know what is
coming, and, as we revel in the expressions of admiration evoked, we
again declaim with enormous pride: "We made it all ourselves!"

There is a solid satisfaction in making a room, especially for an
amateur who hardly expects to undertake room-making as a profession.
We regard our room as an original creation produced by our own
genius, not likely to be duplicated in our personal experience. It
grew in this wise:

When we came to the bungalow last spring the family numbered three
instead of the two of the year before. Now number three, a healthy
and bouncing young woman, necessitated a "sleeping-in" maid if her
parents were ever to be able to detach themselves from her person.
We had never had a sleeping-in maid at the bungalow before and the
problem of where to put her was a serious one. We well knew that no
self-respecting servant would condescend to sleep in an attic,
although the attic was cool, airy and comfortable. We rather
thought, too, that the maid might despise us if we gave her the
bedroom and took up our quarters under the rafters. It would be an
easy enough matter for carpenters and plasterers to put a room in
the attic, but we lacked the money necessary for such a venture. And
so we puzzled. At first we thought of curtains, but the high winds
which visit us made curtains impracticable. Then we thought of
tacking the curtains top and bottom, and from this the idea
evolved. The carpenter whom we consulted proved to be amenable to
suggestion and agreed to put us up a framework in a day. We helped.
We outlined the room on the floor. This took two strips of wood
about one and a half by two inches. The other two sides of the room
were formed by the wall of the attic and by the meeting place of the
roof and floor--that is, there was in reality no fourth wall; the
room simply ended where floor and roof met. Two strips were nailed
to the rafters in positions similar to those on the floor, and then
an upright strip was inserted and nailed fast at intervals of every
three feet. This distance was decided by the fact that curtain
materials usually come a yard wide. For a door we used a discarded
screen-door, which, having been denuded of the bits of wire clinging
to it, answered the purpose very well. The door completed the
skeleton.

We used a beautiful soft blue burlap. Tacking on proved a more
difficult matter than we had anticipated, owing to the fact that our
carpenter had used cypress for the framework. We stretched the
material taut and then tacked it fast with sharp-pointed,
large-headed brass tacks, and while inserting these we measured
carefully the distances between the tacks in order to keep this
trimming uniform. The two walls supplied by the framework were
quickly covered, but the rough wall of the attic necessitated some
cutting, as we had to tack the burlap to the uprights and these had
not been placed with yard-wide material in view. Above the
screen-door frame was a hiatus of space running up into the peak.
The carpenter had thoughtfully run two strips up to the roof and
this enabled us to fill in by cutting and turning in the cloth. A
corresponding space above the window received similar treatment.
Then we covered the inner surface of the screen door and we had a
room.

But we were far from satisfied. The room looked bare and crude. We
bought a can of dark-oak stain and gave the floor a coat and this
improved matters so much that we stained the wood visible on the
door frame and about the window. Having finished this, we saw the
need of doing something for the ceiling. The ceiling was merely the
inner surface of the roof. The builders had made it of boards of
varying sizes, the rafters were rough and splintery and there were
myriads of nails sticking through everywhere. It looked a hopeless
task. But we bought more stain and went to work. Before beginning we
covered our precious blue walls with newspapers, donned our oldest
clothes and spread papers well over the floor. It was well that we
did. The staining was not difficult work but the nails made it
splashy and we were pretty well spotted when we finished.

But when we did finish we felt compensated. The nails had become
invisible. The dull blue walls with their bright brass trimming, the
soft brown floor and the stained, raftered roof made the room the
most attractive in the house. We could not rest, although the hour
was late and we were both tired, until we had furnished it. We put
in a couple of small rugs, a brass bed, and a white bureau. We hung
two pictures securely upon the uprights of the skeleton. We added a
couple of chairs and a rack for clothing, put up a white madras
curtain at the window, and regarded the effect with the utmost
satisfaction. The room answered the purpose exactly. The burlap was
thick enough to act as a screen. It was possible to see movement
through it, but not form. It insured privacy and still permitted the
air to pass through for ventilation. As a finishing touch we screwed
a knob on the outside of the door, put a brass hook on the inside
and went downstairs to count the cost.

As a quick and inexpensive method of adding to the number of rooms
in one's house, the making of a burlap room is without an equal. The
idea is not patented, and we who deem ourselves its creators, are
only too happy to send it on, in the hope that it may be of service
to some other puzzled householder who is wondering where to put an
added family member.

THE CONFESSION STORY. Closely akin to the personal experience article is
the so-called "confession story." Usually published anonymously,
confession stories may reveal more personal and intimate experiences
than a writer would ordinarily care to give in a signed article.
Needless to say, most readers are keenly interested in such revelations,
even though they are made anonymously. Like personal experience stories,
they are told in the first person with a liberal use of the pronoun "I."

A writer need not confine himself to his own experiences for confession
stories; he may obtain valuable material for them from others. Not
infrequently his name is attached to these articles accompanied by the
statement that the confession was "transcribed," "taken down," or
"recorded" by the writer.

Conditions of life in classes of society with which the reader is not
familiar may be brought home to him through the medium of the confession
story. It may be made the means of arousing interest in questions about
which the average reader cares little. The average man or woman, for
example, is probably little concerned with the problem of the poorly
paid college professor, but hundreds of thousands doubtless read with
interest the leading article in an issue of the _Saturday Evening Post_
entitled, "The Pressure on the Professor." This was a confession story,
which did not give the author's own experiences but appeared as
"Transcribed by Walter E. Weyl." This article was obviously written with
the purpose, skillfully concealed, of calling attention to the hard lot
of the underpaid professor.

Constructive criticism of existing conditions may be successfully
embodied in the form of a confession article that describes the evils as
they have been experienced by one individual. If the article is to be
entirely effective and just, the experience of the one person described
must be fairly typical of that of others in the same situation. In order
to show that these experiences are characteristic, the writer may find
it advantageous to introduce facts and figures tending to prove that his
own case is not an isolated example. In the confession article mentioned
above, "The Pressure on the Professor," the assistant professor who
makes the confession, in order to demonstrate that his own case is
typical, cites statistics collected by a colleague at Stanford
University giving the financial status of 112 assistant professors in
various American universities.

Confessions that show how faults and personal difficulties have been
overcome prove helpful to readers laboring under similar troubles. Here
again, what is related should be typical rather than exceptional.

EXAMPLES OF THE CONFESSION STORY. That an intimate account of the
financial difficulties of a young couple as told by the wife, may not
only make an interesting story but may serve as a warning to others, is
shown in the confession story below. Signed "F.B.," and illustrated with
a pen and ink sketch of the couple at work over their accounts, it was
printed in _Every Week_, a popular illustrated periodical formerly
published by the Crowell Publishing Company, New York.

THE THINGS WE LEARNED TO DO WITHOUT

We were married within a month of our commencement, after three
years of courtship at a big Middle West university. Looking back, it
seems to me that rich, tumultuous college life of ours was wholly
pagan. All about us was the free-handed atmosphere of "easy money,"
and in our "crowd" a tacit implication that a good time was one of
the primary necessities of life. Such were our ideas when we married
on a salary of one hundred dollars a month. We took letters of
introduction to some of the "smart" people in a suburb near Chicago,
and they proved so delightfully cordial that we settled down among
them without stopping to consider the discrepancies between their
ways and our income. We were put up at a small country club--a
simple affair enough, comparatively speaking--that demanded six
weeks' salary in initial dues and much more in actual subsequent
expense. "Everybody" went out for Saturday golf and stayed for
dinner and dancing.

By fall there was in working operation a dinner club of the "younger
married set," as our local column in the city papers called us; an
afternoon bridge club; and a small theater club that went into town
every fortnight for dinner and a show. Costly little amusements, but
hardly more than were due charming young people of our opportunities
and tastes. I think that was our attitude, although we did not admit
it. In September we rented a "smart" little apartment. We had
planned to furnish it by means of several generous checks which were
family contributions to our array of wedding gifts. What we did was
to buy the furniture on the instalment plan, agreeing to pay twenty
dollars a month till the bill was settled, and we put the furniture
money into running expenses.

It was the beginning of a custom. They gave most generously, that
older generation. Visiting us, Max's mother would slip a bill into
my always empty purse when we went shopping; or mine would drop a
gold piece into my top bureau drawer for me to find after she had
gone. And there were always checks for birthdays.

Everything went into running expenses; yet, in spite of it, our
expenses ran quite away. Max said I was "too valuable a woman to put
into the kitchen," so we hired a maid, good-humoredly giving her
_carte blanche_ on the grocery and meat market. Our bills, for all
our dining out, were enormous. There were clothes, too. Max
delighted in silk socks and tailored shirts, and he ordered his
monogramed cigarettes by the thousand. My own taste ran to expensive
little hats.

It is hardly necessary to recount the details. We had our first
tremendous quarrel at the end of six months, when, in spite of our
furniture money and our birthday checks, we found ourselves two
hundred and fifty dollars in debt. But as we cooled we decided that
there was nothing we could do without; we could only be "more
careful."

Every month we reached that same conclusion. There was nothing we
could do without. At the end of the year on a $1200 salary we were
$700 behind; eight months later, after our first baby came, we were
over a thousand--and by that time, it seemed, permanently estranged.
I actually was carrying out a threat of separation and stripping the
apartment, one morning, when Max came back from town and sat down to
discuss matters with me.

A curious labyrinthine discussion it was, winding from
recriminations and flat admissions that our marriage was a failure
and our love was dead, to the most poignant memories of our
engagement days. But its central point was Max's detached insistence
that we make marriage over into a purely utilitarian affair.

"Man needs the decencies of a home," he said over and over. "It
doesn't do a fellow any good with a firm like mine to have them know
he can't manage his affairs. And my firm is the kind of firm I want
to work for. This next year is important; and if I spend it dragging
through a nasty divorce business, knowing that everybody knows, I'll
be about thirty per cent efficient. I'm willing to admit that
marriage--even a frost like ours--is useful. Will you?"

I had to. My choice rested between going home, where there were two
younger sisters, or leaving the baby somewhere and striking out for
myself.

"It seems to me," said Max, taking out his pencil, "that if two
reasonably clever people can put their best brain power and eight
hours a day into a home, it might amount to something sometime. The
thing resolves itself into a choice between the things we can do
without and the things we can't. We'll list them. We can't do
without three meals and a roof; but there must be something."

"You can certainly give up silk socks and cigarettes," I said; and,
surprisingly, on this old sore point between us Max agreed.

"You can give up silk stockings, then," he said, and put them down.
Silk socks and silk stockings! Out of all possible economies, they
were the only things that we could think of. Finally--

"We could make baby an excuse," I said, "and never get out to the
club till very late--after dinner--and stay just for the dancing.
And we could get out of the dinner club and the theater bunch. Only,
we ought to have some fun."

"You can go to matinées, and tell me about them, so we can talk
intelligently. We'll say we can't leave the kid nights--"

"We can buy magazines and read up on plays. We'll talk well enough
if we do that, and people won't know we haven't been. Put down:
'Magazines for plays.'"

He did it quite seriously. Do we seem very amusing to you? So
anxious lest we should betray our economies--so impressed with our
social "position" and what people might think! It is funny enough to
me, looking back; but it was bitter business then.

I set myself to playing the devoted and absorbed young mother. But
it was a long, long time before it became the sweetest of realities.
I cried the first time I refused a bridge game to "stay with baby";
and I carried a sore heart those long spring afternoons when I
pushed his carriage conspicuously up and down the avenue while the
other women motored past me out for tea at the club. Yet those long
walks were the best thing that ever happened to me. I had time to
think, for one thing; and I gained splendid health, losing the
superfluous flesh I was beginning to carry, and the headaches that
usually came after days of lunching and bridge and dining.

I fell into the habit, too, of going around by the market, merely to
have an objective, and buying the day's supplies. The first month of
that habit my bills showed a decrease of $16.47. I shall always
remember that sum, because it is certainly the biggest I have ever
seen. I began to ask the prices of things; and I made my first faint
effort at applying our game of substitution to the food problem, a
thing which to me is still one of the most fascinating factors in
housekeeping.

One afternoon in late summer, I found a delightful little bungalow
in process of building, on a side street not so _very_ far from the
proper avenue. I investigated idly, and found that the rent was
thirty dollars less than we were paying. Yet even then I hesitated.

It was Max who had the courage to decide.

"The only thing we are doing without is the address," he said, "And
that isn't a loss that looks like $360 to me."

All that fall and winter we kept doggedly at our game of
substitution. Max bought a ready-made Tuxedo, and I ripped out the
label and sewed in one from a good tailor. I carried half a dozen
dresses from the dyer's to a woman who evolved three very decent
gowns; and then I toted them home in a box with a marking calculated
to impress any chance acquaintance. We were so ashamed of our
attempts at thrift that they came hard.

Often enough we quarreled after we had been caught in some sudden
temptation that set us back a pretty penny, and we were inevitably
bored and cross when we refused some gayety for economy's sake. We
resolutely decided to read aloud the evenings the others went to the
theater club; and as resolutely we substituted a stiff game of chess
for the bridge that we could not afford. But we had to learn to like
them both.

Occasionally we entertained at very small, very informal dinners,
"on account of the baby"; and definitely discarded the wines that
added the "smartness" demanded at formal affairs. People came to
those dinners in their second or third best: but they stayed late,
and laughed hilariously to the last second of their stay.

In the spring we celebrated Max's second respectable rise in salary
by dropping out of the country club. We could do without it by that
time. At first we thought it necessary to substitute a determined
tramp for the Sunday morning golf game; but we presently gave that
up. We were becoming garden enthusiasts. And as a substitution for
most of the pleasure cravings of life, gardening is to be highly
recommended. Discontent has a curious little trick of flowing out of
the earthy end of a hoe.

Later that summer I found that a maid was one of the things I could
do without, making the discovery in an interregnum not of my
original choosing. A charwoman came in for the heavier work, and I
took over the cooking. Almost immediately, in spite of my
inexperience, the bills dropped. I could not cook rich pastries and
fancy desserts, and fell back on simple salads and fruit instead. I
dipped into the household magazines, followed on into technical
articles on efficiency, substituted labor-savers wherever I could,
and started my first muddled set of accounts.

At the beginning of the new year I tried my prentice hand on a
budget; and that was the year that we emerged from debt and began to
save.

That was six very short years ago. When, with three babies, the
bungalow became a trifle small, we built a little country house and
moved farther out. Several people whom we liked best among that
first "exclusive younger set" have moved out too, and formed the
nucleus of a neighborhood group that has wonderful times on incomes
no one of which touches $4000 a year.

Ours is not as much as that yet; but it is enough to leave a wide
and comfortable margin all around our wants. Max has given up his
pipe for cigarettes (unmonogramed), and patronizes a good tailor for
business reasons. But in everything else our substitutions stand:
gardening for golf; picnics for roadhouse dinners; simple food,
simple clothing, simple hospitality, books, a fire, and a game of
chess on winter nights.

We don't even talk about economies any more. We like them.
But--every Christmas there comes to me via the Christmas tree a box
of stockings, and for Max a box of socks--heavy silk. There never is
any card in either box; but I think we'll probably get them till we
die.

The following short confession, signed "Mrs. M.F.E.," was awarded the
first prize by the _American Magazine_ in a contest for articles on "The
Best Thing Experience Has Taught Me":

Forty Years Bartered for What?

A tiny bit of wisdom, but as vital as protoplasm. I know, for I
bartered forty precious years of wifehood and motherhood to learn
it.

During the years of my childhood and girlhood, our family passed
from wealth to poverty. My father and only brother were killed in
battle during the Civil War; our slaves were freed; our plantations
melted from my mother's white hands during the Reconstruction days;
our big town house was sold for taxes.

When I married, my only dowry was a fierce pride and an overwhelming
ambition to get back our material prosperity. My husband was making
a "good living." He was kind, easy-going, with a rare capacity for
enjoying life and he loved his wife with that chivalrous,
unquestioning, "the queen-can-do-no-wrong" type of love.

But even in our days of courting I answered his ardent love-making
with, "And we will work and save and buy back the big house; then we
will--" etc., etc.

And he? Ah, alone at sixty, I can still hear echoing down the years
his big tender laugh, as he'd say, "Oh, what a de-ah, ambitious
little sweetheart I have!"

He owned a home, a little cottage with a rose garden at one side of
it--surely, with love, enough for any bride. But I--I saw only the
ancestral mansion up the street, the big old house that had passed
out of the hands of our family.

I would have no honeymoon trip; I wanted the money instead. John
kissed each of my palms before he put the money into them. My
fingers closed greedily over the bills; it was the nest egg, the
beginning.

Next I had him dismiss his bookkeeper and give me the place. I
didn't go to his store--Southern ladies didn't do that in those
days--but I kept the books at home, and I wrote all the business
letters. So it happened when John came home at night, tired from his
day's work at the store, I had no time for diversions, for
love-making, no hours to walk in the rose garden by his side--no, we
must talk business.

I can see John now on many a hot night--and summer _is_ hot in the
Gulf States--dripping with perspiration as he dictated his letters
to me, while I, my aching head near the big hot lamp, wrote on and
on with hurried, nervous fingers. Outside there would be the evening
breeze from the Gulf, the moonlight, the breath of the roses, all
the romance of the southern night--but not for us!

The children came--four, in quick succession. But so fixed were my
eyes on the goal of Success, I scarcely realized the mystery of
motherhood. Oh, I loved them! I loved John, too. I would willingly
have laid down my life for him or for any one of the children. And I
intended _sometime_ to stop and enjoy John and the children. Oh,
yes, I was going really to _live_ after we had bought back the big
house, and had done so and so! In the meanwhile, I held my breath
and worked.

"I'll be so glad," I remember saying one day to a friend, "when all
my children are old enough to be off at school all day!" Think of
that! Glad when the best years of our lives together were passed!
The day came when the last little fellow trudged off to school and I
no longer had a baby to hamper me. We were living now in the big
old home. We had bought it back and paid for it. I no longer did
John's bookkeeping for him--he paid a man a hundred dollars a month
to do that--but I still kept my hand on the business.

Then suddenly one day--John died. _Died_ in what should have been
the prime and vigor of his life.

I worked harder than ever then, not from necessity, but because in
the first few years after John left I was _afraid_ to stop and
think. So the years hurried by! One by one the children grew up and
entered more or less successful careers of their own.... I don't
feel that I know them so very well.

And now that the time of life has come when I must stop and think, I
ask myself: "What did you do with the wonderful gifts Life laid in
your lap--the love of a good man, domestic happiness, the chance to
know intimately four little souls?"

And being honest I have to answer: "I bartered Life's great gifts
for Life's pitiful extras--for pride, for show!"

If my experience were unique it would not be worth publishing, but
it is only too common. Think of the wives who exchange the best
years of their lives, their husband's comfort, his peace of mind, if
not to buy back the family mansion, then for a higher social
position; sometimes it is merely for--clothes!

It is to you women who still have the opportunity to "walk with John
in the garden" that I give my dearly bought bit of experience. Stop
holding your breath until you get this or that; stop reaching out
blindly for to-morrow's prize; _live_ to-day!

THE "HOW-TO-DO-SOMETHING" ARTICLE. Articles the primary purpose of which
is to give directions for doing something in a particular way, are
always in demand. The simplest type is the recipe or formula containing
a few directions for combining ingredients. More elaborate processes
naturally demand more complex directions and require longer articles. In
the simpler types the directions are given in the imperative form; that
is, the reader is told to "take" this thing and that, and to "mix" it
with something else. Although such recipe directions are clear, they are
not particularly interesting. Many readers, especially those of
agricultural journals, are tired of being told to do this and that in
order to get better results. They are inclined to suspect the writer of
giving directions on the basis of untried theory rather than on that of
successful practice. There is an advantage, therefore, in getting away
from formal advice and directions and in describing actual processes as
they have been carried on successfully.

Articles intended to give practical guidance are most interesting when
cast in the form of an interview, a personal experience, or a narrative.
In an interview article, a person may indirectly give directions to
others by describing in his own words the methods that he has used to
accomplish the desired results. Or the writer, by telling his own
experiences in doing something, may give readers directions in an
interesting form.

Whatever method he adopts, the writer must keep in mind the questions
that his readers would be likely to ask if he were explaining the method
or process to them in person. To one who is thoroughly familiar with a
method the whole process is so clear that he forgets how necessary it is
to describe every step to readers unfamiliar with it. The omission of a
single point may make it impossible for the reader to understand or to
follow the directions. Although a writer need not insult the
intelligence of his readers by telling them what they already know, he
may well assume that they need to be reminded tactfully of many things
that they may have known but have possibly forgotten.

TWO PRACTICAL GUIDANCE ARTICLES. A method of filing office records, as
explained apparently by the man who devised it, is well set forth in the
following combination of the personal experience and the
"how-to-do-something" types of articles. It appeared in _System_ with a
half-tone reproduction of a photograph showing a man looking over
records in a drawer of the desk at which he is seated.