How To Write Special Feature Articles Part 10

"Suppose I delayed a week and wrote the reply with pen and ink, or, worse, with a pencil on ruled tablet paper. I'd stand a good chance of losing a customer, wouldn't I? If I didn't miss an order outright, I should certainly leave a suggestion of inefficiency and carelessness which could only be charged to the debit side of the business."

She has found that a $50 typewriter and a letter file have helped greatly to create the good-will which is as essential to the farmer business woman as to the woman who runs a millinery shop or an insurance office.

Mrs. Tupper has encouraged automobile trade. Her apiary is within sight of the road, and a "Honey for Sale" sign brings many a customer. Many of her city patrons have the habit of driving to the farm and returning with a hamper laden with eggs, honey, b.u.t.ter, or canned stuff from the vegetable garden. The garden last summer supplied material for more than 900 cans of vegetables.

The neighbors smile at her zeal for fairs and poultry shows.

"It isn't fun altogether; it's business," she tells them.

It was cold, disagreeable work, for instance, to prepare an exhibit for the Heart of America Poultry Show at Kansas City last fall; but Mrs. Tupper felt repaid. She won first prize on hen, first and second on pullet, and fourth on c.o.c.kerel. Then she exhibited at the St. Joseph, Missouri, Poultry Show with even better success.

"These prizes will add to the value of every chicken I have, and to all my poultry products. They give me another advertising point,"

she said.

"The shows gave me a fine opportunity to meet possible customers and to make friends for my business. I was on the job for days. I met scores of people and distributed hundreds of cards. I learned a lot, too, in talks with judges and experienced breeders."

The Tupper bungalow is neat and attractive. In spite of her duties in the poultry house and apiary, Mrs. Tupper serves appetizing meals. She finds time for church work and neighborhood calls, and gives every Thursday to the Red Cross.

The housework is speeded up with such conveniences as hot and cold water in kitchen and bathroom, and steam heat. The kitchen is an efficient little workshop lined by cupboards and shelves. Mrs.

Tupper can sit before her kitchen cabinet and prepare a meal without moving about for ingredients and utensils. A service wagon saves steps between kitchen and dining-room.

The floors of the bungalow are of hard wood. They are waxed a few times each year, and a little work each morning with dust mop and carpet sweeper keeps them in good order. The was.h.i.+ng is sent out.

"I couldn't earn an income from the farm if I had a farmhouse without modern improvements," Mrs. Tupper declared. "Reducing drudgery to a minimum is only plain business sense. Laundry work, scrubbing, and dishwas.h.i.+ng have a low economic value. Such unskilled labor eats up the time and strength one needs for the more profitable and interesting tasks of farm management, accounting and correspondence, advertising and marketing."

THE PERSONALITY SKETCH. We all like to read about prominent and successful people. We want to know more about the men and women who figure in the day's news, and even about interesting persons whose success has not been great enough to be heralded in the press. What appeals to us most about these individuals is, not mere biographical facts such as appear in _Who's Who_, but the more intimate details of character and personality that give us the key to their success. We want to see them as living men and women. It is the writer's problem to present them so vividly that we shall feel as if we had actually met them face to face.

The purpose of the personality sketch may be (1) to give interesting information concerning either prominent or little known persons, (2) to furnish readers inspiration that may bear fruit in their own lives, (3) to give practical guidance by showing how one individual has accomplished a certain thing. Whether the aim is to afford food for thought, inspiration to action, or guidance in practical matters, the treatment is essentially the same.

The recognized methods of describing characters in fiction may be used to advantage in portraying real persons. These are (1) using general descriptive terms, (2) describing personal appearance, (3) telling of characteristic actions, (4) quoting their words, (5) giving biographical facts, (6) citing opinions of others about them, (7) showing how others react to them. By a judicious combination of several of these methods, a writer can make his readers visualize the person, hear him speak, watch him in characteristic actions, and understand his past life, as well as realize what others think of him and how they act toward him.

Material for a personality sketch may be obtained in one of three ways: (1) from a more or less intimate acquaintance with the person to be described; (2) from an interview with the person, supplemented by conversation with others about him; (3) from printed sketches of him combined with information secured from others. It is easier to write personality sketches about men and women whom we know well than it is about those whom we have never met, or with whom we have had only a short interview. Inexperienced writers should not attempt to prepare sketches of persons whom they know but slightly. In a single interview a writer who is observant, and who is a keen judge of human nature, may be able to get an impression sufficiently strong to serve as the basis of a satisfactory article, especially if the material obtained in the interview is supplemented by printed sketches and by conversations with others. Personality sketches sometimes include long interviews giving the person's opinions on the subject on which he is an authority. In such articles the sketch usually precedes the interview.

EXAMPLES OF THE PERSONALITY SKETCH. The first of the following sketches appeared, with a half-tone portrait, in the department of "Interesting People" in the _American Magazine_; the second was sent out by the Newspaper Enterprise a.s.sociation, Cleveland, Ohio, which supplies several hundred daily newspapers with special features.

(1)

"TOMMY"--WHO ENJOYS STRAIGHTENING OUT THINGS

BY SAMPSON RAPHAELSON

Six years ago a young Bulgarian immigrant, dreamy-eyed and shabby, came to the University of Illinois seeking an education. He inquired his way of a group of undercla.s.smen and they pointed out to him a large red building on the campus.

"Go there," they said gayly, "and ask for Tommy."

He did, and when he was admitted to the presence of Thomas Arkle Clark, Dean of Men, and addressed him in his broken English as "Mis-terr Tommy," the dean did not smile. Although Mr. Clark had just finished persuading an irascible father to allow his reprobate soph.o.m.ore son to stay at college, and although he was facing the problem of advising an impetuous senior how to break an engagement with a girl he no longer loved, he adapted himself to the needs and the temperament of the foreigner instantly, sympathetically, and efficiently.

In five minutes the Bulgarian had a job, knew what courses in English he ought to take, and was filled with a glow of hope, inspiration, and security which only a genius in the art of graciousness and understanding like "Tommy Arkle," as he is amiably called by every student and alumnus of Illinois, can bestow.

This is a typical incident in the extremely busy, richly human daily routine of the man who created the office of Dean of Men in American universities. Slender, short, well-dressed, his gray hair smartly parted, with kindly, clever, humorous blue eyes and a smile that is an ecstasy of friendliness, "Tommy" sits behind his big desk in the Administration Building from eight to five every day and handles all of the very real troubles and problems of the four thousand-odd men students at the University of Illinois.

He averages one hundred callers a day, in addition to answering a heavy mail and attendance upon various committee, board, and council meetings. He is known all over the country as an authority on fraternities and their influence, and a power for making that influence constantly better and finer. In business, farmer, and school circles in the Middle West Mr. Clark is famous for his whimsical, inspiring speeches. His quick, shaft-like humor, his keen, devastating sarcasm, and his rare, resilient sympathy have made him a personality beloved particularly by young persons.

They still tell the story on the campus of an ingenuous youngster who walked into the dean's office one fall, set his suitcase on the floor, and drawing two one-dollar bills and a fifty-cent piece from his pocket, laid the money on the big desk, saying:

"That's all the money I have. I've come to work my way through. Will you help me to get a job?"

In a flash "Tommy" noted the boy's eager, imaginative brown eyes, his wide, compact lips and strong jaw. Reaching over, he took the two bills and pocketed them, leaving the half-dollar.

"The traditional great men," said the dean, "started their university careers with only fifty cents. I don't want you to be handicapped, so I'll keep this two dollars. You can get work at ---- Green Street waiting on table for your meals, and the landlady at ---- Chalmers Street wants a student to fire her furnace in exchange for room rent."

The boy earned his way successfully for several months. Then suddenly he was taken sick. An operation was necessary. Mr. Clark wired for a Chicago specialist and paid all expenses out of his own pocket. The student recovered, and two years after he was graduated sent "Tommy" a letter enclosing a check for five hundred dollars.

"To redeem my two dollars which you have in trust," the letter said, "and please use the money as a medical fund for sick students who need, but cannot afford, Chicago specialists."

The dean has an abnormal memory for names and faces. Every year he makes a "rogues' gallery"--the photographs of all incoming freshmen are taken and filed away. And many an humble, unknown freshman has been exalted by the "h.e.l.lo, Darby," or "Good morning, Boschenstein"--or whatever his name happened to be--with which the dean greeted him.

Mr. Clark once revealed to me the secret of his life. Fifteen years ago he was professor of English and had strong literary ambitions, with no little promise. There came the offer of the office of Dean of Men. He had to choose between writing about peoples lives or living those lives with people. And he chose, with the result that at all times of the day and night it's "Tommy this, and Tommy that"; an accident case may need him at two A.M. in the hospital, or a crowd of roystering students may necessitate his missing a night's sleep in order to argue an irate sheriff into the conviction that they are not robbers and murderers. He has been known to spend many evenings in the rooms of lonesome students who "need a friend."

"Tommy Arkle" is one of the Middle West's finest contributions to the modern ideal of human service.

(2)

TWO NEW MACHINE GUNS ARE INVENTED FOR THE U.S. ARMY BY THE "EDISON OF FIREARMS"

BY HARRY B. HUNT

HARTFORD, CONN., NOV. 12.--"Well, Old J.M. has done it again."

That is the chief topic of conversation these days in the big shops of Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport, where the bulk of the rifles, pistols and machine guns for Uncle Sam's army is being turned out.

For in these towns to say that "Old J.M. has done it again" is the simplest and most direct way of stating that John M. Browning has invented a new kind of firearm.

This time, however, "Old J.M." has done it twice. He has invented not one, but two new guns. Both have been accepted by the United States government, contracts for immense numbers of each have been signed, and work of production is being pushed night and day. The new weapons will be put into the field against Germany at the earliest possible day.

Who is John Browning? You never heard of him?

Well, Browning is the father of rapid-fire and automatic firearms.

His is the brain behind practically every basic small firearm invention in the past 40 years. He has been to the development of firearms what Edison has been to electricity.

"Unquestionably the greatest inventor of firearms in the world," is the unanimous verdict of the gun experts of the Colt, Remington and Winchester plants, whose business it is to study and criticise every development in firearms.

But if Browning is our greatest gun inventor, he is the most "gun-shy" genius in the country when it comes to publicity. He would rather face a machine gun than a reporter.

A few years ago a paper in his home state--Utah--published a little story about his success as an inventor, and the story was copied by the Hartford Courant.

"I'd rather have paid $1,000 cash than have had that stuff printed,"

Browning says.