The San Francisco earthquake--I believe they always allude to it out
there as "the fire"--occurred--that next year; and Stanton, who had
succeeded old Hanscher in Herald Square--the latter had died in harness
at his desk--heard, in that mysterious way that newspaper men hear
everything, that Shelby was in the ill-fated city when the earth rocked
on that disastrous night. Immediately he telegraphed him, "Write two
thousand words of your experiences, your sensations in calamity. Wire
them immediately. Big check awaits you."
Silence followed. Stanton and I talked it over, and we concluded that
Shelby must have been killed.
"If he isn't dead, here at last is the great adventure he has been
longing for," I couldn't help saying.
No word ever came from him; but two weeks later he blew into town, and
again Stanton found out that he had arrived.
"Why didn't you answer my wire?" he telephoned him.
"I couldn't," Shelby rather whimpered over the line. "You see, Stanton,
old top, the thing got me too deeply. I just couldn't--I hope you'll
understand--write one word of it."
But it was not the grief of the man who feels so deeply that he cannot
shed a tear. It was the craven in Shelby that had shocked the
meretricious Shelby into insensibility, into utter inarticulateness in
one of the crowning disasters of the ages.
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