Miss Elsie Keasoner, the celebrated warfare correspondent and solely American lady who witnessed the coronation of the queen of the Netherlands, is the recipient of recent honors, as she is the youngest member of the Paris Fee, being the Chicago consultant of the Related Press on the French capital. The New York and London workplace will probably be represented by skilled males, however this lady, who was solely 20 years outdated, was unanimously chosen for this accountable place by the managers of the three departments.
Miss Keasoner’s “good luck” is proverbial; however, when analyzed, it’s the professional end result of an virtually occult energy to foresee a chance and an unerring intuition to know a possibility and a Napoleonic spirit that defies defeat and instructions success.
For example, she went to Holland on a vacation journey, her Related Press credentials granting privileges somewhat than conferring tasks. On reaching Amsterdam she discovered a cablegram saying the damaging sickness of the London correspondent who was to have lined the task.
Undismayed by the duty of being the one consultant of this nice newspaper curiosity on the Dutch capital, she quickly matured her plans. In about two hours, she made masterly headway in arranging her funds, and had extra money cabled to her order than 1000’s of males spend in a lifetime. Her story was written and in fifteen minutes the pinnacle was in Chicago, the physique in New York and the tail in London. Throughout the festivities she cabled twice each day, and her descriptions of the royal ceremonies had been learn by thousands and thousands. She needed to meet the settled prejudices of the Dutch autocrats, her official place being distinctive within the historical past of the Netherlands. However lastly they capitulated and he or she actually “took” Holland, so {that a} poet opined that the younger queen and Elsie had been modified of their cradles, and that the good American was the actual ruler.
When she went to Cuba because the consultant of a syndicate, she had the wit to take a liner to Jamaica as an alternative of risking a quarantine at Key West, the place a number of hundred correspondents had been cursing their destiny. Upon her arrival, the newspaper males advised her to stay on the press boat, bribing her with guarantees of essentially the most alluring scoops. However she scoffingly responded:
“Ha! Do you suppose I’m right here for the surroundings?”
The intrepid lady went ashore and even all the way down to the firing line at Siboney.
“Had been you ever in peril?” she was requested.
“Oh, the mauser bullets had been making dents in folks throughout me,” was the careless response of 1 who had by no means regarded upon a corpse till she noticed useless our bodies in piles upon the battlefield. She went fearlessly into the yellow fever camps and visited the contagious wards of the tented hospitals, to not gratify a morbid curiosity, for all that was female inside her shrank from the fearful sight, however within the discharge of her skilled duties and for the help she might give the victims.
Personally, Miss Keasoner is a charming lady, and is idolized by her pals. Men and women discover her a most loyal comrade. She has the soul of a poet and the brains of a financier—a mighty mixture of sound sense and beautiful sentiment.
This text initially appeared within the Could 1900 Situation of SUCCESS journal.
