The story
“The city editor called the girl reporter over to his desk. ‘I want you to interview a young chump who recently inherited ten millions,’ he said. ‘Judging from the way he has been scattering it around, it will all be gone in the space of a year. He is mighty good copy, and if you get the right kind of a story I’ll play it up strong.’ The girl reporter interviewed the young millionaire, and found that the possession of millions had been anything but good for him. The following morning the young man got the surprise of his life when he read in his favorite paper an article criticizing him in a semi-humorous manner, and remarking that while he pitied the poor, still he himself could not earn a dollar a day if thrown upon his own resources. For a moment he was angry, then ‘She is right,’ he said to himself. ‘But I shall prove to her and to the world that I am capable of earning my own living.’ The millionaire called up the reporter at her office, and told her his resolution. Then he disappeared.
“A year passed and no word came of the missing millionaire. Then the search for an embezzler absorbed the attention of the various newspapers. The girl was dispatched to a small town to locate him. She arrived in the place in company with the reporter of a rival paper, but they made common cause, and went to the jail where the embezzler, who had just been arrested, had been confined. There both reporters gained a confession from the prisoner, but the rival reporter managed to slip away and reached the telegraph office before the girl. He told her that he intended to keep the telegrapher busy until after the newspapers went to press, so that his paper should secure ‘the scoop.’ A recent storm had destroyed telephone communication, so the girl hired an automobile and set out at full speed for the neighboring town where she hoped to telegraph her story. An accident to the automobile left her stranded on a lonely road, the only person in sight, besides herself and the chauffeur, being a telegraph lineman, who was just descending a pole. She rushed to him to ask assistance. The lineman turned, and she recognized the missing millionaire. ‘I am making more than a dollar a day now,’ he said. ‘So I guess you were wrong.’ With his pocket kit, the millionaire lineman cut into the wire and telegraphed the girl’s story to her newspaper, while the rival reporter fumed and fretted, wondering why communication was cut off. When the final word had been sent and a ‘scoop’ assured, the millionaire lineman turned to his companion. ‘I said I would work for a year,’ he remarked, ‘and my time is up tomorrow. Won’t you marry me and help me spend that ten million?’ And the girl reporter said ‘Yes.’”
Summary from Reel Life · 16 October 1915
