“Be terse in style, vigorous of phrase, apt, concretely apt, in similitude.  Avoid platitudes and commonplaces.  Exercise selection.  Seize upon things salient, eliminate the rest, and you have pictures.  Paint those pictures in words and the Intelligencer will have you.  Get hold of a few back numbers, and study the Sunday Intelligencer feature story.  Tell it all in the opening paragraph as advertisement of contents, and in the contents tell it all over again.  Then put a snapper at the end, so if they’re crowded for space they can cut off your contents anywhere, reattach the snapper, and the story will still retain form.  There, that’s enough.  Study the rest out for yourself.”

They both rose to their feet, Edna quite carried away by his enthusiasm and his quick, jerky sentences, bristling with the things she wanted to know.

“And remember, Miss Wyman, if you’re ambitious, that the aim and end of journalism is not the feature article.  Avoid the rut.  The feature is a trick.  Master it, but don’t let it master you.  But master it you must; for if you can’t learn to do a feature well, you can never expect to do anything better.  In short, put your whole self into it, and yet, outside of it, above it, remain yourself, if you follow me.  And now good luck to you.”

They had reached the door and were shaking hands.

“And one thing more,” he interrupted her thanks, “let me see your copy before you turn it in.  I may be able to put you straight here and there.”

Edna found the manager of the Loops a full-fleshed, heavy-jowled man, bushy of eyebrow and generally belligerent of aspect, with an absent-minded scowl on his face and a black cigar stuck in the midst thereof.  Symes was his name, she had learned, Ernst Symes.

“Whatcher turn?” he demanded, ere half her brief application had left her lips.

“Sentimental soloist, soprano,” she answered promptly, remembering Irwin’s advice to talk up.

“Whatcher name?” Mr. Symes asked, scarcely deigning to glance at her.

She hesitated.  So rapidly had she been rushed into the adventure that she had not considered the question of a name at all.

“Any name?  Stage name?” he bellowed impatiently.

“Nan Bellayne,” she invented on the spur of the moment.  “B-e-l-l-a-y-n-e.  Yes, that’s it.”

He scribbled it into a notebook.  “All right.  Take your turn Wednesday and Saturday.”

“How much do I get?” Edna demanded.

“Two-an’-a-half a turn.  Two turns, five.  Getcher pay first Monday after second turn.”

And without the simple courtesy of “Good day,” he turned his back on her and plunged into the newspaper he had been reading when she entered.

Edna came early on Wednesday evening, Letty with her, and in a telescope basket her costume—­a simple affair.  A plaid shawl borrowed from the washerwoman, a ragged scrubbing skirt borrowed from the charwoman, and a gray wig rented from a costumer for twenty-five cents a night, completed the outfit; for Edna had elected to be an old Irishwoman singing broken-heartedly after her wandering boy.