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Show : : Little Journeys in Americana o :; j; B, LESTER B. COLBY ;; America's First "Sob Sister" MANY women have, lived In history because of beauty, wit, or other charm that made them loved of men. Few women have come walking down the corridors of Time, their fame far-flung far-flung because of Die .acidity of their wrnth. Such a woman wrote history In Washington. Slie has been dead now three-quarters of a century. I am speaking of Anne Royal) 1 Anne Royall mleht be railed America's Ameri-ca's first "sob sister." She was the nation's first writing newspnper woman. wom-an. She was the first woman In the United Suites to own urn) edit her own newspaper. Site was Indk-ted, tried and convicted as a common scold the Inst under tlie Inw. She was sentenced sen-tenced to be ducked, though the sentence sen-tence was never carried out. John Qulncy Adams, one-time Prest-dent, Prest-dent, handed down a morsel to posterity pos-terity when he described her as being! "Like a vlrugo errant In enchanted armor,' redeeming herself from the cramps "of Indigence hy the notoriety of her eccentricities and the forced currency of her publications." Public men didn't like Anne Royall. She was the widow of a Revolutionary soldier from Virginia. She appeared In Washington In 1824 asking for a widow's pension. She was denied It and grew embittered. Finally, getting hold of a tumble-down printing press and some battered type, she launched herself upon her career. At first ber small weekly was called the Washington Paul Pry. Later tt was renamed the Huntress. All who earned her III will she scourged In It with abandon. A contemporary, reminiscent remi-niscent in his later years, wrote of her : "She was the terror of politicians, especially congressmen. I can see her now, tramping through the halls of he old Capitol, umbrella In hand, seizing upon every passerby and offering her book for sale. Any public man who refused to buy was sure of a severe philippic In ber newspaper." None escaped ber. It was aald that she forced ber way Into the presence of every President from, the time of her arrival until 1854, when she died. AH public men who paid her tribute, some have claimed, reaped glowing mention in her columns. - But woe betide be-tide those who refused. As age crept on she grew more unlovely un-lovely still, and the acids of her wrath bit deeper. At last she became so unendurable that a grand Jury formally for-mally Indicted her. She was tried before Judge William Orancb In Circuit Cir-cuit court The law which made possible the ducking of scolds, long forgotten, was dragged from oblivion as especially suitable for governing her case, and Washington prepared for a hippodrome. hippo-drome. With the old crone In their power, however, the Idea ceased to hold Its humor with her tormentors It seems. Anyway, some one lost heart. In the end her punishment wns commuted to a floe and Imprisonment and she was not subjected to the greater Indignity. Though she never profited much and died poor. Anne Itoyall, In the example she set, hatched out a' breed of contemptible Journalists Journal-ists that persisted for many years. In fuct, they are not quite ell dead. Tet she Is not entirely without honor. She did originate the personal type of Interview and she must go down In history as the first woman In her field. And none who ever felt the scaring of her white-hot brand ever forgot that here was a woman who could fight . & ll. Lmim B Colby I |