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Show He Wasn't Interested Lincoln Springfield, whose career of more than forty years In Fleet street, has admirably fitted him to write his reminiscences thereof, relates a story of a reporter named Jewell, gifted with a brilliant descriptive pen, but sadly lacking in knowledge of the value of news "Down at Blackwall, at the Thames iron works, H. M. S. Albion was to be launched one June afternoon by the duchess of York (the present queen) ; and this occurred to me to be just the kind of function that Jewell would do prettily and gracefully. "Sure enough, Jewell wrote a brilliant bril-liant description of the scene the nearest thing to a Turner sunset that you could get In manuscript. I was on the point of sending it up to the compositors, com-positors, and was glowing with pleasure pleas-ure over my judgment in having selected se-lected Jewell for the job, when a mes- senger placed on my desk a report from the tape machine, announcing that 30 people had been drowned at the launching. As the ship took the water, the displacement had submerged sub-merged a staging where masses of spectators were assembled. Several hundred of them were thrown Into the water, and more than 30 of them could not be rescued. "There had not. In Jewell's masterpiece master-piece of scenic effect, been a hint of any disaster, of anything at all untoward. un-toward. "I demanded an explanation from Jewell. Hadn't he seen anything of the catastrophe? "'Well.' replied the languid Jewell, 1 did see some people bobbing about la the water, as I came away, but ' " |