hill streets. The following gentlemen were impaneled as jurors by the Coroner: A. B. Stuart, W. J. Prout, R. M. Stuart, J. M. Coulter, R. Gambert, and R. Gabler. The first witness examined was young Brannon, who testified to seeing the man fall. Dr. W. H. Saylor, called as a medical expert, after a careful examination of the body, gave it as his opinion that the man died from natural causes. The Coroner's jury brought in a verdict in accordance with the above facts. Savage was an Irishman, unmarried and about forty years old. He came to this city nearly seven months since and entered Mr. Gumbert's employment as a barber. He had conducted himself well up to Christmas day, when he took to drinking. He continued his dissipation steadily and especially for the last week. The frequency and quantity of liquor drank [sic] by him, together with abstinence from food, so weakened his system that his spree culminated in death. He was respectably clad, and $24.50 in coin was found in his pockets. He has a brother, who is also a barber, at Gilroy, Cal. Mr. Gumbert telegraphed last night to Gilroy to find out what disposition the brother desired to have made of the body, but no answer had been received up to a late hour last night.
This is below standard in so many respects that comment seems unnecessary. Other papers were more careful, but all of them tended to go outside the record to make unnecessarily defamatory statements—usually more grammatically than this reporter succeeded in doing it.
An example of a news item told in the chatty interview form with the effect of reducing the emphasis on the information given and leaving the reader with an impression of comment after the news rather than the news itself, is this one from the Daily Northwest News of April 7, 1883:
Items From the Front.
"Yes, sir," said genial Superintendent of Construction J. L. Hallett to a News reporter yesterday. "I am through with the Clarke's Fork division of the Northern Pacific railroad now, and I discharged all my men, 5,500 in all, on the 31st ultimo. The road is finished up to and track laid over the last crossing of Pen d'Oreille."
"About 266 in all, 143 of which are on this side of the tunnel and have been graded about half that distance during the past year by contractors. In my section, or rather in the Clarke's Fork division, all but eight miles had to be bal-
"How many miles are there yet unfinished?"
