In Our Town Part 6

Though he was elected, more out of grat.i.tude for what he had tried to do for the town than because people thought he would make a fair judge, he got no further than his office in popular esteem. He did not seem to wear well with the people in the daily run and jostle of life. During the forty years he has been in our town, he has lived most of the time apart from the people--transacting his business in the East, or locating strangers on new lands. He has not been one of us, and there were stories afloat that his shrewdness had sometimes caused him to thrust a toe over the dead-line of exact honesty. In the town he never helped us to fight for those things of which the town is really proud: our schools, the college, the munic.i.p.al ownership of electric lights and waterworks, the public library, the abolition of the saloon, and all of the dozen small matters of public interest in which good citizens take a pride. Colonel Morrison was living his grand life, in his tailor-made clothes, while his townsmen were out with their coats off making our town the substantial place it is. So in his latter days he is old Alphabetical Morrison, a man apart from us. We like him well enough, and so long as he cares to be justice of the peace no one will object, for that is his due. But, someway, there is no talk of making him County Clerk; and there is a reason in everyone's mind why no party names him to run for County Treasurer. He has been trying hard enough for ten years to break through the crust of the common interests that he has so long ignored. One sees him at public meetings--a rather wistful-looking, chubby-faced old man--on the edge of the crowd, ready to be called out for a speech. But no one calls his name; no one cares particularly what old Alphabetical has to say. Long ago he said all that he can say to our people.

The only thing that Alphabetical ever organised that paid was a family.

In the early days he managed to get a home clear of indebtedness and was shrewd enough to keep it out of all of his transactions. Tow-headed Morrisons filled the schoolhouse, and twenty years later there were so many of his girls teaching school that the school-board had to make a ruling limiting the number of teachers from one family in the city school, in order to force the younger Morrison girls to go to the country to teach. In these days the girls keep the house going and Alphabetical is a notary public and a justice of the peace, which keeps his office going in the little square board building at the end of the street. But every day for the past ten years he has been coming to our office for his bundle of old newspapers. These he reads carefully, and sometimes what he reads inspires him to write something for our paper on the future of the Queen City, though much oftener his articles are retrospective. He is the president of the Old Settlers' Society, and once or twice a year he brings in an obituary which he has written for the family of some of the old-timers.

One would think that an idler would be a nuisance in a busy place, but, on the contrary, we all like old Alphabetical around our office. For he is an old man who has not grown sour. His smooth, fat face has not been wrinkled by the vinegar of failure, and the noise that came from his l.u.s.ty lungs in the old days is subsiding. But he has never forgiven General Durham, of the _Statesman_, for saying of a fight between Alphabetical and another land agent back in the sixties that "those who heard it p.r.o.nounced it the most vocal engagement they had ever known."

That is why he brings his obituaries to us; that is why he does us the honour of borrowing papers from us; and that is why, on a dull afternoon, he likes to sit in the old sway-back swivel-chair and tell us his theory of the increase in the rainfall, his notion about the influence of trees upon the hot winds, his opinion of the disappearance of the gra.s.shoppers. Also, that is why we always save a circus-ticket for old Alphabetical, just as we save one for each of the boys in the office.

[Ill.u.s.tration: He likes to sit in the old sway-back swivel-chair and tell us his theory of the increase in the rainfall]

One day he came into the office in a bad humour. He picked up a country paper, glanced it over, threw it down, kicked from under his feet a dog that had followed a subscriber into the room, and slammed his hat into the waste-basket with considerable feeling as he picked up a New York paper.

"Well--well, what's the matter with the judiciary this morning?"

someone asked the old man.

He did not reply at once, but turned his paper over and over, apparently looking for something to interest him. Gradually the revolutions of his paper became slower and slower, and finally he stopped turning the paper and began reading. It was ten or fifteen minutes before he spoke. When he put down the paper his cherubic face was beaming, and he said:

"Oh--I know I'm a fool, but I wish the Lord had sent me to live in a town large enough so that every dirty-faced brat on the street wouldn't feel he had a right to call me 'Alphabetical'! Dammit, I've done the best I could! I haven't made any alarming success. I know it. There's no need of rubbing it in on me."--He was silent for a time with his hands on his knees and his head thrown back looking at the ceiling. Almost imperceptibly a smile began to crack his features, and, when he turned his eyes to the man at the desk, they were dancing with merriment, as he said: "Just been reading a piece here in the _Sun_ about the influence of climate on human endeavour. It says that in northern lat.i.tudes there is more oxygen in the air and folks breathe faster, and their blood flows faster, and that keeps their livers going. Trouble with me has always been climate--sluggish liver. If I had had just a little more oxygen floating round in my system, the woollen mill would still be running, the street-cars would be going, and this town would have had forty thousand inhabitants. My fatal mistake was one of lat.i.tude.

But"--and he drawled out the word mockingly--"but I guess if the Lord had wanted me to make a town here he would have given me a different kind of liver!" He slapped his knees as he sighed: "This is a funny world, and the more you see of it the funnier it gets." The old man grinned complacently at the ceiling for a minute, and before getting out of his chair kicked his shoe-heels together merrily, wiped his gla.s.ses as he rose, put his bundle of papers under his arm, and left the office whistling an old, old-fashioned tune.

XI

The Casting Out of Jimmy Myers

It seemed a cruel thing to do, but we had to do it. For ours is ordinarily a quiet office. We have never had a libel suit. We have had fewer fights than most newspaper offices have, and while it hardly may be said that we strive to please, still in the main we try to get on with the people, and tell them as much truth as they are ent.i.tled to for ten cents a week. Naturally, we do our best to get up a sprightly paper, and in that the Myers boy had our idea exactly. He was industrious; more than that, he tried with all his might to exercise his best judgment, and no one could say that he was careless; yet everyone around the office admitted that he was unlucky. He was one of those persons who always have slivers on their doors, or tar on the knocker, when opportunity comes their way; so his stay in the office was marked by a series of seismic disturbances in the paper that came from under his desk, and yet he was in no way to blame for them.

We took him from the college at the edge of town. He had been running the college paper for a year, and knew the merchants around town fairly well; and, since he was equipped as far as education went, he seemed to be a likely sort of a boy for reporter and advertising solicitor.

One of the first things that happened to him was a mistake in an item about the opera house. He said that a syndicate had taken a lien on it.

What he meant was a lease, and as he got the item from a man who didn't know the difference, and as the boy stuck to it that the man had said lien and not lease, we did not charge that up to him. A few days later he wrote for a town photographer a paid local criticising someone who was going around the county peddling picture-frames and taking orders for enlarged pictures. That was not so bad, but it turned out that the pedlar was a woman, and she came with a rawhide and camped in the office for two days waiting for Jimmy, while he came in and out of the back door, stuck his copy on the hook by stealth, and travelled only in the alleys to get his news. One could hardly say that he was to blame for that, either, as the photographer who paid for the item didn't say the pedlar was a woman, and the boy was no clairvoyant.

[Ill.u.s.tration: And camped in the office for two days, looking for Jimmy]

One dull day he wrote a piece about the gang who played poker at night in Red Martin's room. Jimmy said he wasn't afraid of Red, and he wasn't.

The item was popular enough, and led to a raid on the place, which disclosed our best advertiser sitting in the game. To suppress his name meant our shame before the town; to print it meant his--at our expense.

It was embarra.s.sing, but it wasn't exactly the boy's fault. It was just one of those unfortunate circ.u.mstances that come up in life. However, the advertiser aforesaid began to hate the boy.

He must have been used to injustice all his life, for there was a vertical line between his eyes that marked trouble. The line deepened as he went further and further into the newspaper business; for, generally speaking, a person who is unlucky has less to fear handling dynamite than he has writing local items on a country paper.

A few days after the raid on the poker-room Jimmy, who had acquired a particularly legible hand, wrote: "The hem of her skirt was trimmed with pink crushed roses," and he was in no way to blame for the fact that the printer accidentally put an "h" for a "k" in skirt, though the woman's husband chased Jimmy into a culvert under Main Street and kept him there most of the forenoon, while the cheering crowd informed the injured husband whenever Jimmy tried to get out of either end of his prison.

The printer that made the mistake bought Jimmy a new suit of clothes, we managed to print an apology that cooled the husband's wrath, and for ten days, or perhaps two weeks, the boy's life was one round of joy.

Everything was done promptly, accurately and with remarkable intelligence. He whistled at his work and stacked up more copy than the printers could set up in type. No man ever got in or out of town without having his name in our paper. Jimmy wrote up a railroad bond election meeting so fairly that he pleased both sides, and reported a murder trial so well that the lawyers for each side kept the boy's pockets full of ten-cent cigars. The vertical wrinkle was fading from his forehead, when one fine summer morning he brought in a paid item from a hardware merchant, and went blithely out to write up the funeral of the wife of a prominent citizen. He was so cheerful that day that it bothered him.

He told us in confidence that he never felt festive and gay that something didn't happen. He was not in the building that evening when the paper went to press, but after it was printed and the carriers had left the office he came in, singing "She's My Sweetheart, I'm Her Beau,"

and sat down to read the paper.

Suddenly the smile on his face withered as with frost, and he handed the paper across the table to the bookkeeper, who read this item:

DIED--MRS. LILLIAN GILSEY.

Prepare for the hot weather, my good woman. There is only one way now; get a gasoline stove, of Hurley & Co., and you need not fear any future heat.

And it wasn't Jimmy's fault. The foreman had merely misplaced a head line, but that explanation did not satisfy the bereaved family.

Jimmy was beginning to acquire a reputation as a joker. People refused to believe that such things just happened. They did not happen before Mr. James Myers came to the paper--why should they begin with his coming and continue during his engagement? Thus reasoned the comforters of the Gilseys, and those interested in our downfall. The next day the _Statesman_ wrote a burning editorial denouncing us "for an utter lack of all sense of common decency" that permitted us "to violate the sacredest feeling known to the human heart for the sake of getting a ribald laugh from the unthinking." We were two weeks explaining that the error was not the boy's fault. People a.s.sumed that the mistake could not have occurred in any well-regulated printing office, and it didn't seem probable that it could occur--yet there it was. But Jimmy wasn't to blame. He suffered more than we did--more than the bereaved family did.

He went unshaven and forgot to trim his cuffs or turn his collar. He hated to go on the streets for news, and covered with the office telephone as much of his beat as possible.

The summer wore away and the dog days came. The Democratic State campaign was about to open in our town, and orators and statesmen a.s.sembled from all over the Missouri valley. There was a lack of flags at the dry-goods stores. The Fourth of July celebration had taken all the stock. The only materials available were some red bunting, some white bunting, and some blue bunting with stars dotted upon it. With this bunting the Committee on Reception covered the speakers' stand, wrapping the canopy under which the orators stood in the solid colours and the star-spangled blue. It was beautiful to see, and the pride of the window-dresser of the Golden Eagle Clothing Store. But the old soldiers who walked by nudged one another and smiled.

About noon of the day of the speaking the City Clerk, who wore the little bronze b.u.t.ton of the G. A. R., asked Jimmy if he didn't want someone to take care of the Democratic meeting. Jimmy, who hated politics, was running his legs off to get the names of the visitors, and was glad to have the help. He turned in the contributed copy without reading it, as he had done with the City Clerk's articles many times before, and this is what greeted his horrified eyes when he read the paper:

"UNDER THE STARS & BARS"

Democracy Opens Its State Campaign Under the Rebel Emblem To-day A Fitting Token Treasonable Utterances Have a Proper Setting

And then followed half a column of most violent abuse of the Democrats who had charge of the affair. Jimmy did not appear on the street that night, but the next morning, when he came down, the office was crowded with indignant Democrats "stopping the paper."

We began to feel uneasy about Jimmy. So long as his face was in the eclipse of grief there seemed to be a probability that we would have no trouble, but as soon as his moon began to shine we were nervous.

Jimmy had a peculiar knack of getting up little stories of the town--not exactly news stories, but little odd bits that made people smile without rancour when they saw their names in the quaintly turned items. One day he wrote up a story of a little boy whose mother asked him where he got a dollar that he was flourishing on his return with his father from a visit in Kansas City. The little boy's answer was that his father gave it to him for calling him uncle when any ladies were around. It was merrily spun, and knowing that it would not make John Lusk, the boy's father, mad, we printed it, and Jimmy put at the head of it a foolish little verse of Kipling's. Miss Larrabee, at the bottom of her society column, announced the engagement of two prominent young people in town.

The Sat.u.r.day paper was unusually readable. But when Jimmy came in after the paper was out he found Miss Larrabee in tears, and the foreman leaning over the counter laughing so that he couldn't speak. It wasn't Jimmy's fault. The foreman had done it--by the mere transposition of a little bra.s.s rule separating the society news from Jimmy's story with the Kipling verse at the head of it. The rule tacked the Kipling verse onto Miss Larrabee's article announcing the engagement. Here is the way it read:

"This marriage, which will take place at St. Andrew's Church, will unite two of the most popular people in town and two of the best-known families in the State.

"_And this is the sorrowful story Told as the twilight fails, While the monkeys are walking together, Holding each other's tails!_"

Now, Jimmy was no more to blame than Miss Larrabee, and many people thought, and think to this day, that Miss Larrabee did it--and did it on purpose. But for all that it cast clouds over the moon of Jimmy's countenance, and it was nearly a year before he regained his merry heart. He was nervous, and whenever he saw a man coming toward the office with a paper in his hand Jimmy would dash out of the room to avoid the meeting. For an hour after the paper was out the ringing of the telephone bell would make him start. He didn't know what was going to happen next.

But as the months rolled by he became calm, and when Governor Antrobus died, Jimmy got up a remarkably good story of his life and achievements, and though there was no family left to the dear old man to buy extra copies, all the old settlers--who are the hardest people in the world to please--bought extra copies for their sc.r.a.pbooks. We were proud of Jimmy, and a.s.signed him to write up the funeral. That was to be a "day of triumph in Capua." There being no relatives to interfere, the lodges of the town--and the Governor was known as a "jiner"--had vied with one another to make the funeral the greatest rooster-feather show ever given in the State. The whole town turned out, and the foreman of our office, and everyone in the back room who could be spared, was at the Governor's funeral, wearing a plume, a tin sword, a red leather belt, or a sash of some kind. We put a tramp printer on to make up the paper, and told Jimmy to call by the undertaker's for a paid local which the undertaker had written for the paper that day.

Jimmy's face was beaming as he snuggled up to his desk at three o'clock that afternoon. He said he had a great story--names of the pall-bearers, names of the double s.e.xtette choir, names of all the chaplains of all the lodges who read their rituals, names of distinguished guests from abroad, names of the ushers at the church. Page by page he tore off his copy and gave it to the tramp printer, who took it in to the machines.

Trusting the foreman to read the proof, Jimmie rushed out to get from a United States Senator who was attending the funeral an interview on the sugar scandal, for the Kansas City _Star_.

The rest of us did not get back from the cemetery until the carriers had left the office, and this is what we found:

"The solemn moan of the organ had scarcely died away, like a quivering sob upon the fragrant air, when the mournful procession of citizens began filing past the flower-laden bier to view the calm face of their beloved friend and honoured townsman. In the grief-stricken hush that followed might be heard the stifled grief of some old comrade as he paused for the last time before the coffin.

"At this particular time we desire to call the attention of our readers to the admirable work done by our hustling young undertaker, J. B.

Morgan. He has been in the city but a short time, yet by his efficient work and careful attention to duty, he has built up an enviable reputation and an excellent custom among the best families of the city.

All work done with neatness and dispatch. We strive to please.

"When the last sad mourner had filed out, the pall-bearers took up their sorrowful task, and slowly, as the band played the 'Dead March in Saul,'

the great throng a.s.sembled in the street viewed the mortal remains of Governor Antrobus start on their last long journey."

Of course it wasn't Jimmy's fault. The "rising young undertaker" had paid the tramp printer, who made up the forms, five dollars to work his paid local into the funeral notice. But after that--Jimmy had to go.