Whether or not this reckless
program would have been carried out it is impossible to say, for when,
three days later, the ragged army arrived in the city, worn out with
fatigue and half dead from hunger, the agent had decamped.
A reporter happened to pick up the story, and by mere chance met
Pulitzer and induced him to write out in German the tale of his
experiences. This account created such an impression on the mind of the
editor through whose hands it passed that Pulitzer was offered, and
accepted, with the greatest misgivings, as he solemnly assured us, a
position as reporter on the Westliche Post.
The event proved that there had been no grounds for J. P.'s modest
doubts. After he had been some time on the paper, things went so badly
that two reporters had to be got rid of. The editor kept Pulitzer on the
staff, because he felt that if anyone was destined to force him out of
the editorial chair it was not a young, uneducated foreigner, who could
hardly mumble half-a-dozen words of English. The editor was mistaken.
Within a few years J. P. not only supplanted him but became half-
proprietor of the paper.
Another interesting anecdote of his early days, which he told with great
relish, related to his experience as a fireman on a Mississippi
ferryboat.
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