“Where’s the boss’ money?” asked one of the burglars as he held a revolver to Johnson’s head. “Sakes alive,” the porter stuttered. “If the boss kept his money here he wouldn’t let me sleep in the place.” The burglars laughed heartily and departed.
III. The following story--a mother’s account of the death of her son--is a fine example of the best type of human-interest story. It was published in the New York _Sun_ (morning), often referred to as the “newspaper man’s newspaper” because of the high standard of writing that it maintains. “Study the _Sun’s_ style” is the advice given to reporters in many newspaper offices. The story here reproduced is by Frank Ward O’Malley. It was reprinted in the _Outlook_ of November 9, 1907:
Mrs. Catherine Sheehan stood in the darkened parlor of her home at 361 West Fifteenth street late yesterday afternoon, and told her version of the murder of her son Gene, the youthful policeman whom a thug named Billy Morley shot in the forehead, down under the Chatham Square elevated station early yesterday morning. Gene’s mother was thankful that her boy hadn’t killed Billy Morley before he died, “because,” she said, “I can say honestly, even now, that I’d rather have Gene’s dead body brought home to me, as it will be to-night, than to have him come to me and say, ‘Mother, I had to kill a man this morning.’
“God comfort the poor wretch that killed the boy,” the mother went on, “because he is more unhappy to-night than we are here. Maybe he was weak-minded through drink. He couldn’t have known Gene or he wouldn’t have killed him. Did they tell you at the Oak Street Station that the other policemen called Gene Happy Sheehan? Anything they told you about him is true, because no one would lie about him. He was always happy, and he was a fine-looking young man, and he always had to duck his helmet when he walked under the gas fixture in the hall, as he went out the door.
“He was doing dance steps on the floor of the basement, after his dinner yesterday noon, for the girls--his sisters, I mean--and he stopped of a sudden when he saw the clock and picked up his helmet. Out on the street he made pretend to arrest a little boy he knows, who was standing there--to see Gene come out, I suppose--and when the little lad ran away laughing, I called out, ‘You couldn’t catch Willie, Gene; you’re getting fat.’
