James Knapp Reeve has been engaged as night watchman.
Last Tuesday Munkittrick, who has charge of the automatic
double-chisel mortising machine, while getting out his
second batch of verselets for the day and talking with
Frankie Paine at the same time, accidentally lost a thumb.
You must be more careful, Munk.
Dan Quin is laid off for a week for sassing the foreman.
Ruth Stuart is pasting labels on boxes on the sixth floor.
Jimmy Reeve is captain of the Combined Press Base Ball Club,
which will play against the Mule Spinners from Cohoes on
Thursday.
Johnnie Bangs had the misfortune to lose his pay envelope
last Saturday night. It contained $4.65. The finder will
please send it to him at Yonkers.
The Albert Bigelow Paine Chowder Club will give one of their
delightful assemblies at Milligan’s Hall at the Hydraulics
next Saturday. Gents, 35c. Ladies, free.
And do my PHILISTINE readers think this is all good fooling? Do they
think that no such circular was ever issued? I hope they do. It is
pleasant to retain our old fashioned belief that men write because they
have something to say: because like Charles Reade they have a purpose to
accomplish; because like Thackeray they can dazzle us with the satire of
a master, or because like Stevenson they can take us to Treasure Island
or on that Inland Voyage where were days of such delight as come rarely
to men.
This circular, however, is a stubborn reality printed in muddy black
and gory red, and the word Combined is evidently pronounced Combin-ed.
It will be sent to poor devils who imagine that by subscribing to a
fifteen-dollar share of stock, their wares may be marketed like peaches
in September, by men whose names are known because they are signed to
“verselets, squibs and jokes” in Harper’s Drawer. Thus may the salaries
of the officers be paid. It’s a lovely plan, and could originate in no
better place than Franklin, Ohio. Then, too, “American Tract Building”
sounds good. Surely nothing else than sincerity could issue from a Tract
Building, and a guarantee of “commercial independence” is worth something.
But it’s none the less pathetic, for all that. Many shares of stock will
be taken, and many weary days will be spent waiting for the promised halo
which, after all, wouldn’t fit if it came. It was the father of Jules
St. Ange, if I remember correctly, who made “the so best sugah in New
Orleans,” And he died and never sold a barrel of it. He was happy because
he knew it was the best, though the commercial men told him it was not.
So, too, as all the World’s Louis has said, “He who has meant good work
has done good work, though he has not the time to sign his name.”
I knew a man once, though, who worked many weary hours one Christmas
time, and made a holiday story for a morning paper. It was a story of
such truth as moved men to give to a hospital in a great city such money
as supported it for half a year, and sick children were made well because
of it. But he was not a man of “marked literary ability” and he never
knew what he had done. He was not an Adam Smith, and he knew little and
cared less about the wealth of nations. He simply wrote the truth from a
heart that knew its own. Such men do not need to be told if their work be
good or bad. They give us the best there is in them, and we are comforted
because they have told us the things we knew before, only we didn’t know
how to put them on paper.