He flushed with surprise and vexation, and began to curse the telegraph officials "who never kept their engagements," and went off in a towering rage.

My 6000 words went on before a single word of the message to the "Herald" could go.
Mr.Young had ordered for that evening a magnificent dinner for his staff, to which mine was invited to celebrate his unquestioned feat.
While waiting for the dinner to come on, he took me apart and asked confidentially what we had really done.

I told him, and he asked if we cabled, to which I replied that as to that I knew nothing, that I had wired G.W.Smalley in London, but what he had done I could not say.
"Well," said he, "if you have cabled you have beaten us, and if you have not cabled you may have beaten us," and then he went on to say that if I would drop the "Tribune" and come over to the "Herald" he would give me a good post and good pay.

"No," I replied, "I have taken service with the 'Tribune' for the campaign, and I cannot desert them." (My recompense was a curt dismissal from the "Tribune" as soon as the urgent work of the reporting of the opening was done.) Mr.
Whitelaw Reid's nerve had failed him when it came to the question of the expense of cabling, and the 6000 words had gone by steamer from Queenstown.

I had given the "Tribune" the best beat it had ever had except the Sedan report, if the editor had had the courage to profit by it.