There was no ceremony when Archie began work on the evening paper.  Mr. Jennings told him that he thought they understood each other pretty well, and that he could use his own discretion, very often, about getting articles.  “You can be as independent as you like, Archie,” he said, “and use your own ideas as much as you like.”  This pleased the boy very much indeed.  He was beginning to feel now that he had really won his spurs, and that he was a full-fledged journalist.  It seemed scarcely possible that it had taken him little more than six months to make this great advance in circumstances, and yet he could see himself a few months previous, sleeping in the station-house.  Now his days of poverty were surely over, and he would have a clear path ahead of him to accomplish his great ambition to be a successful author and writer of books.  For the present, it was good experience for him to be working upon the Enterprise, and he felt that he ought to be very much contented, since there were men old enough to be his father who were not earning as much money.

He liked the work upon the evening paper very much.  He didn’t have to get down early in the morning, and at three o’clock in the afternoon he was always through.  He was very glad indeed that there was no night work, for he now spent his evenings in studying shorthand, which he thought might be helpful to him in many ways.  He didn’t have much routine work to do upon the paper in the beginning, but he told Mr. Jennings that he would like to get as much experience as possible, so the good editor gave him a lot of regular reporting to do, as well as the special work which was daily featured in the paper.  This special work consisted of interviews with various successful men.  Archie had always felt a great admiration for men who had “done something,” and as New York was simply filled with wealthy and successful men, who had started as poor boys, he found a wide field for work.  He found it very interesting to meet these men of affairs, and have them tell him of their early struggles, how they had begun on the farm or in the factory, and had worked themselves up through industry and perseverance to the high places they now occupied.  He found it very easy to get access to most of them, for they had all read of his experiences in the Enterprise, and Archie found that his fame as the “Boy Reporter” was quite general and widespread.  Some of the great men were quite as much determined to interview him as he was anxious to interview them, so that he usually got along very well by telling them first of his own experiences, and then asking them about their own boyhood days.  It was work that never became monotonous, for each day he saw a man quite different in most respects from the man he had interviewed the day before, and of course every one had something different to say.