Show ELECTION XIGIIT IN A NEWSPAPER OFFICE From Scribners Magazine I There is one night in every year in every great newspaper office when work is done that is the least understood under-stood of all that goes on in the making of a daily paper one night when the highest state of fever attends the excitement ex-citement and strain of the most intense work that falls to the lot of any men except soldiers in war That is election night I That is a night when a few men sit down at 6 oclock before virgin sheets I of paper with the knowledge that before I be-fore 2 oclock the next morning they must cover those sheets with the election elec-tion returns of a nation digesting mountains of figures and apprising the public of the results in the most condensed con-densed forms weeks in advance of the official announcements as sparks might be counted as they fly from the shapeless shape-less iron on a blacksmiths anvil 1 And these culatlons must stand the test of comparison with tHose which the rival newspapers working without collaboration col-laboration as eager competitors will publish at the same moment The election elec-tion figures come in driblets and atoms i and must be put together as the Florentines Flor-entines make their mosaics Some of it we shall see is plucked from the very air as a magician seems to collect coins in a borrowed hatbegotten of reasoning reason-ing i but put down beside the genuine returns with equal confidence and almost al-most equal accuracy Ah but that is a work to try ccol heads and strong nerves I am rune certain no 6ther men in the world include such a night of tension and excitement ex-citement periodically as a llxad part of a workaday existence No other men regularly once a year feel tyamselves I so truly in the focus of an intense public i pub-lic interest jnanifestVJs itsef in so many ways J I 1f i JJLIAM RALIif |