Bring on the Angels

It was the mantis gladest damnedest existence ever enjoyed by mortal youth. A newspaper reporter in those days had a grand and gaudy time of it, no call to envy any man. And yet I have marveled that the human race did not revolt against the imposture, dig up the carcass of Gutenberg and he went to the buzzards and hyenas in some convenient zoo.

The CBS Radio Workshop. Dedicated to man's imagination, the theater of the mind. Tonight, bring on the angels, an affectionate revival drawn from his own book newspaper days of the early life and times of Henry L. Menken.

The man in the bed has had a stroke. A being full of gusto and sour joy, he's paralyzed. A master's master of words, he'll never speak sense again. He's 68. His eyes are open, but there's no fire there.

They see instead inward. What the sudden grab of Thrombosis has left of his brain, now gropes in the swirling mist of reversing time. Seeks, finds, remembers. I remember my father died on Friday, January 13, 1899, and was buried on the ensuing Sunday.

On the Monday evening immediately following, I presented myself in the city room of the old Baltimore Morning Herald, and applied to Max Waze, the city editor for a job. Mr. Waze, sir. I was 18 years, four months, and four days old.

All my hair long issued and parted in the middle, had on a high stiff collar and an I'm going to ask if Provat weighed something on the minus side of 120 pounds. Sir? What's the problem, Sonny?

I'd like a job, a reporter's job. Got any experience? No, no sir. Then a school? Born a more politics than a institute, but I've done some writing. Poetry? Well, yes, yes sir. What makes you think you want to be a newspaper man?