SOURCE: "About People," in The New Republic, Vol. LXXXXIV, No. 1213, March 2, 1938, pp. 108-09.

In the following essay, Ferguson comments on Mitchell's creative approach to feature writing.

There are hundreds of fancy feature writers scattered through the newspaper business, but few of them ever show up as the creative people they hope to be (sufficient unto the day is the newsprint thereof). Joseph Mitchell is an exception, that writer's mirage of a man who can cover an angle of the news neither inspiring in itself nor congenital to him, get the stuff in for the home edition, and still be able to collect it for a second or third reading.

Mitchell covers several dozen news angles in the life of metropolitan New York, from freak to human interest, from behind the lines on headline sensations to strippers, reefer smokers, the life of a bar and grill. In doing it...