Psmith, Journalist - P. G. Wodehouse (i am reading a book TXT) 📗

Psmith, Journalist

By P. G. Wodehouse.

Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Preface Psmith, Journalist I: “Cosy Moments” II: Billy Windsor III: At “The Gardenia” IV: Bat Jarvis V: Planning Improvements VI: The Tenements VII: Visitors at the Office VIII: The Honeyed Word IX: Full Steam Ahead X: Going Some XI: The Man at the Astor XII: A Red Taximeter XIII: Reviewing the Situation XIV: The Highfield XV: An Addition to the Staff XVI: The First Battle XVII: Guerilla Warfare XVIII: An Episode by the Way XIX: In Pleasant Street XX: Cornered XXI: The Battle of Pleasant Street XXII: Concerning Mr. Waring XXIII: Reductions in the Staff XXIV: A Gathering of Cat Specialists XXV: Trapped XXVI: A Friend in Need XXVII: Psmith Concludes His Ride XXVIII: Standing Room Only XXIX: The Knockout for Mr. Waring Conclusion Colophon Uncopyright Imprint

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Preface

The conditions of life in New York are so different from those of London that a story of this kind calls for a little explanation. There are several million inhabitants of New York. Not all of them eke out a precarious livelihood by murdering one another, but there is a definite section of the population which murders⁠—not casually, on the spur of the moment, but on definitely commercial lines at so many dollars per murder. The “gangs” of New York exist in fact. I have not invented them. Most of the incidents in this story are based on actual happenings. The Rosenthal case, where four men, headed by a genial individual calling himself “Gyp the Blood” shot a fellow-citizen in cold blood in a spot as public and fashionable as Piccadilly Circus and escaped in a motorcar, made such a stir a few years ago that the noise of it was heard all over the world and not, as is generally the case with the doings of the gangs, in New York only. Rosenthal cases on a smaller and less sensational scale are frequent occurrences on Manhattan Island. It was the prominence of the victim rather than the unusual nature of the occurrence that excited the New York press. Most gang victims get a quarter of a column in small type.

P. G. Wodehouse

New York, 1915

Psmith, Journalist I “Cosy Moments”

The man in the street would not have known it, but a great crisis was imminent in New York journalism.

Everything seemed much as usual in the city. The cars ran blithely on Broadway. Newsboys shouted “Wux-try!” into the ears of nervous pedestrians with their usual Caruso-like vim. Society passed up and down Fifth Avenue in its automobiles, and was there a furrow of anxiety upon Society’s brow? None. At a thousand street corners a thousand policemen preserved their air of massive superiority to the things of this world. Not one of them showed the least sign of perturbation. Nevertheless, the crisis was at hand. Mr. J. Fillken Wilberfloss, editor-in-chief of Cosy Moments, was about to leave his post and start on a ten weeks’ holiday.

In New York one may find every class of paper which the imagination can conceive. Every grade of society is catered for. If an Eskimo came to New York, the first thing he would find on the bookstalls in all probability would be the Blubber Magazine, or some similar production written by Eskimo for Eskimo. Everybody reads in New York, and reads all the time. The New Yorker peruses his favourite paper while he is being jammed into a crowded compartment on the subway or leaping like an antelope into a moving street car.

There was thus a public for Cosy Moments. Cosy Moments, as its name (an inspiration of Mr. Wilberfloss’s own) is designed to imply, is a journal for the home. It is the sort of paper which the father of the family is expected to take home with him from his office and read aloud to the chicks before bedtime. It was founded by its proprietor, Mr. Benjamin White, as an antidote to yellow journalism. One is forced to admit that up to the present yellow journalism seems to be competing against it with a certain measure of success. Headlines are still of as generous a size as heretofore, and there is no tendency on the part of editors to scamp the details of the last murder case.

Nevertheless, Cosy Moments thrives. It has its public.

Its contents are mildly interesting, if you like that sort of thing. There is a “Moments in the Nursery” page, conducted by Luella Granville Waterman, to which parents are invited to contribute the bright speeches of their offspring, and which bristles with little stories about the nursery canary, by Jane (aged six), and other works of rising young authors. There is a “Moments of Meditation” page, conducted by