It is no small undertaking to embark in an untried ship, upon unknown
waters, in the teeth of opposing gales. But Mr. Opp sailed the sea of
life as a valiant mariner should, self-reliant, independent, asking
advice of nobody. He steered by the guidance of his own peculiar moral
compass, regardless of the rough waters through which it led him.
Having invested the major portion of his savings in the present venture,
it was necessary to begin operations at once; but events conspired to
prevent him. Miss Kippy made many demands upon his time both by day and
night; she had transferred her affection and dependence from her father
to him, and he found himself sorely encumbered by this new
responsibility. Moreover, the attitude of the town toward the innovation
of a newspaper was one of frank skepticism, and it proved a delicate and
arduous task to create the proper public sentiment. In addition to these
troubles, Mr. Opp had a yet graver matter to hinder him: with all his
valor and energy he was suffering qualms of uncertainty as to the proper
method of starting a weekly journal.
To be sure, he had achieved a name for the paper--a name so eminently
satisfactory that he had already had it emblazoned upon a ream of office
paper. "The Opp Eagle" had sprung full-syllabled from his teeming brain,
and had been accepted over a hundred competitors.
But naming the fledgling was an easy matter compared with getting it out
of the nest; and it was not until the instalment of his competent staff
that Mr. Opp accomplished the task.
This important transaction took place one morning as he sat in his new
office and struggled with his first editorial. The bare room, with the
press in the center, served as news-room, press-room, publication
office, and editorial sanctum. Mr. Opp sat at a new deal table, with one
pen behind his ear, and another in his hand, and gazed for inspiration
at the brown wrapping-paper with which he had neatly covered the walls.
His mental gymnastics were interrupted by the appearance at the door of
Miss Jim Fenton and her brother Nick.
Miss Jim was an anomaly in the community, being by theory a spinster,
and by practice a double grass-widow. Capable and self-supporting, she
attracted the ne'er-do-wells as a magnet attracts needles, but having
been twice induced to forego her freedom and accept the bonds of
wedlock, she had twice escaped and reverted to her original type and
name. Miss Jim was evidently a victim of one of Nature's most economical
moods; she was spare and angular, with a long, wrinkled face surmounted
by a scant fluff of pale, frizzled hair. Her mouth slanted upward at
one corner, giving her an expression unjustly attributed to coquetry,
when in reality it was due to an innocent and pardonable pride in an
all-gold eye-tooth.
But it was her clothes that brought misunderstanding, misfortune, and
even matrimony upon Miss Jim. They were sent her by the boxful by a
cousin in the city, and the fact was unmistakable that they were clothes
with a past. The dresses held an atmosphere of evaporated frivolity;
flirtations lingered in every frill, and memories of old larks lurked in
every furbelow. The hats had a jaunty list to port, and the colored
slippers still held a dance within their soles. One old bird of paradise
on Miss Jim's favorite bonnet had a chronic wink for the wickedness he
had witnessed.
It was this wink that attracted Mr. Opp as he looked up from his arduous
labors. For a disconcerting moment he was uncertain whether it belonged
to Miss Jim or to the bird.
"Howdy, Mr. Opp," said the lady in brisk, businesslike tones. "I was
taking a crayon portrait home to Mrs. Gusty, and I just stopped in to
see if I couldn't persuade you to take my brother to help you on the
newspaper. You remember Nick, don't you?"
Mr. Opp glanced up. A skeleton of a boy, with a shaven head, was peering
eagerly past him into the office, his keen, ferret-like eyes devouring
every detail of the printing-presses.
"He knows the business," went on Miss Jim, anxiously pulling at the
fingers of her gloves. "He's been in it over a year at Coreyville. He
wants to go back; but I ain't willing till he gets stronger. He ain't
been up but two weeks."
Mr. Opp turned impressively in his revolving chair, the one luxury which
he had deemed indispensable, and doubtfully surveyed the applicant. The
mere suggestion of his leaning upon this broken reed seemed ridiculous;
yet the boy's thin, sallow face, and Miss Jim's imploring eyes, caused
him to hesitate.
"Well, you see," he said, with thumbs together and his lips pursed,
after the manner of the various employers before whom he had stood in
the past, "we are just making a preliminary start, and we haven't
engaged our staff yet. I am a business man and a careful one. I don't
feel justified in going to no extra expense until 'The Opp Eagle' is, in
a way, on its feet."
"Oh, that's all right," said the boy; "I'll work a month for nothing.
Lots of fellows do that on the big papers."
Miss Jim plucked warningly at his sleeve, and Mr. Opp, seeing that
Nick's enthusiasm had led him beyond his depth, went gallantly to the
rescue.
"Not at all," he said hastily; "that ain't my policy. I think I might
contrive to pay you a small, reasonable sum down, and increase it in
ratio as the paper become more prosperous. Don't you think you better
sit down?"
"No, sir; I'm all right," said the boy, impatiently. "I can do 'most
anything about a paper, setting type, printing, reporting, collecting,
'most anything you put me at."
Such timely knowledge, in whatever guise it came, seemed Heaven-sent.
Mr. Opp gave a sigh of satisfaction.
"If you feel that you can't do any better than accepting the small sum
that just at present I'll have to offer you, why, I think we can come to
some arrangement."
"That's mighty nice in you," said Miss Jim, jerking her head forward in
order to correct an undue backward gravitation of her bonnet. "If ever
you want a crayon portrait, made from life or enlarged from a
photograph, I'll make you a special price on it. I'm just taking this
here one home to Mrs. Gusty; she had it done for Guin-never's birthday."
Miss Jim removed the wrappings and disclosed a portrait of Miss
Guinevere Gusty, very large as to eyes and very small as to mouth. She
handed it to Mr. Opp, and called attention to its fine qualities.
"Just look at the lace on that dress! Mrs. Fallows picked a whole
pattern off on her needles from one of my portraits. And did you notice
the eyelashes; you can actually count 'em! She had four buttons on her
dress, but I didn't get in but three; but I ain't going to mention it to
Mrs. Gusty. Don't you think it's pretty?"
Mr. Opp, who had been smiling absently at the portrait, started
guiltily. "Yes," he said confusedly; "yes, ma'am, I think she is." Then
he felt a curious tingling about his ears and realized, to his
consternation, that he was blushing.
"She's too droopin' a type for me," said Miss Jim, removing an ostrich
tip from her angle of vision; then she continued in a side whisper:
"Say, would you mind making Nick take this bottle of milk at twelve
o'clock, and resting a little? He ain't as strong as he lets on, and he
has sort of sinking spells 'long about noon."
Receiving the bottle thus surreptitiously offered, and assisting the
lady to gather up her bundles, Mr. Opp bowed her out, and turned to face
the embarrassing necessity of giving instructions to his new employee.
He was relieved to find, however, that the young gentleman in question
possessed initiative; for Nick had promptly removed his coat, and fallen
to work, putting things to rights with an energy and ability that caused
Mr. Opp to offer up a prayer of heartfelt gratitude.
All the morning they worked silently, Mr. Opp toiling over his
editorial, with constant references to a small dictionary which he
concealed in the drawer of the table, and Nick giving the presses a
thorough and much-needed overhauling.
At the noon-hour they shared their lunch, and Mr. Opp, firm in the
authority invested in him by Miss Jim, demanded that Nick should drink
his milk, and recline at length upon the office bench for twenty
minutes. It was with great difficulty that Nick was persuaded to submit
to this transferred coddling; but he evidently realized that
insubordination at the start of his career would be fatal, and,
moreover, his limbs ached and his hands trembled.
It was in the intimacy of this, their first, staff meal, that they
discussed the policy of the paper.
"Of course," said Mr. Opp, "we have got a vast undertaking in front of
us. For the next few months we won't scarcely have time to draw a
natural breath. I am going to put every faculty I own on to making 'The
Opp Eagle' a fine paper. I expect to get here at seven o'clock A.M., and
continue to pursue my work as far into the midnight hours as may need
be. Nothing in the way of pleasure or anything else is going to pervert
my attention. Of course you understand that my mind will be taken up
with the larger issues of things, and I'll have to risk a dependence on
you to attend to the smaller details."
"All right," said Nick, gratefully; "you won't be sorry you trusted me,
Mr. Opp. I'll do my level best. When will we get out the first issue?"
"Well--er--the truth is," said Mr. Opp, "I haven't, as you might say,
accumulated sufficient of material as yet. You see, I have a great many
irons in the fire, and besides opening up this office, I am the
president of a company that's just bought up twenty acres of ground
around here. The biggest oil proposition--"
"Yes, sir," interrupted Nick; "but don't you think we could get started
in two weeks, with the ads and the contributors' letters from other
counties, and a story or two I could run in, and your editorial page?"
"I've got two advertisements," said Mr. Opp; "but I don't intend to rest
content until every man in the Cove has got a card in. Now, about these
contributors from other counties?"
"I can manage that," said Nick. "I'll write to some girl or fellow I
know in the different towns, and ask them to give me a weekly letter.
They sign themselves 'Gipsy' or 'Fairy' or 'Big Injun' or something
like that, and tell what's doing in their neighborhood. We'll have to
fix the letters up some, but they help fill in like everything."
Mr. Opp's spirits rose at this capable cooeperation.
"You--er--like the name?" he asked.
"'The Opp Eagle'?" said Nick. "Bully!"
Such unqualified approval went to Mr. Opp's head, and he rashly broke
through the dignity that should hedge about an editor.
"I don't mind reading you some of my editorial," he said urbanely; "it's
the result of considerable labor."
He opened the drawer and took out some loosely written pages, though he
knew each paragraph by heart. Squaring himself in his revolving-chair,
and clearing his throat, he addressed himself ostensibly to the
cadaverous youth stretched at length before him, but in imagination to
all the southern counties of the grand old Commonwealth of Kentucky.
His various business experiences had stored such an assorted lot of
information in his brain that it was not unlike a country store in the
diversity of its contents. His style, like his apparel, was more ornate
and pretentious than what lay beneath it. There were many words which he
knew by sight, but with which he had no speaking acquaintance. But Mr.
Opp had ideals, and this was the first opportunity he had ever had to
put them before his fellow-men.
"The great bird of American Liberty," he read impressively, "has soared
and flown over the country and lighted at last in your midst. 'The Opp
Eagle' appears for the first time to-day. It is no money scheme in which
we are indulging; we aim first and foremost to fulfil a much-needed want
in the community. 'The Opp Eagle' will tell the people what you want to
know better and at less expense than any other method. It will aim at
bringing the priceless gems of knowledge within the reach of everybody.
For what is bread to the body if you do not also clothe the mind
spiritually and mentally?
"We will boom this, our native, city. If possible, I hope to get the
streets cleaned up and a railroad, and mayhap in time lamp-posts. This
region has ever been known for its great and fine natural resources, but
we have been astounded, you might say astonished, in recent visits to
see its naked and crude immensities, which far exceeds our most sanguine
expectations. So confident are we that a few of our most highly
respectable citizens have, at the instigation of the Editor of 'The Opp
Eagle,' bought up the land lying between Turtle Creek and the river, and
as soon as a little more capital has been accumulated, intend to open up
a oil proposition that will astonish the eyes of the natives!
"In all candor, we truly believe this favored region of ours to have no
equal in underground wealth nowhere upon this terrestrial earth, albeit
we are not of globe-trotter stock nor tribe. We will endeavor to induce
the home people to copy after the wise example of a few of our leading
citizens and buy up oil rights before the kings of Bonanzas from the
Metropolitan cities discover our treasure and wrench it from our grasp.
'The Opp Eagle' will, moreover, stand for temperance and reform. We will
hurl grape and cannister into the camps of the saloonatics until they
flee the wrath to come. Will also publish a particular statement of all
social entertainments, including weddings, parties, church socials, and
funerals. In conclusion, would say that we catch this first opportunity
to thank you in collective manner herein for the welcome you have
ordained 'The Opp Eagle.'"
Mr. Opp came to a close and waited for applause; nor was he
disappointed.
"Gee! I wish I could write like that!" said Nick, rising on his elbow.
"I can do the printing all right, and hustle around for the news; but I
never know how to put on the trimmings."
Mr. Opp laid a hand upon his shoulder; he was fast developing a
fondness for the youth.
"It's a gift," he said sympathetically, "that I am afraid, my boy,
nobody can't learn you."
"Can I come in?" said a voice from outside, and Mr. Gallop peeped around
the open door.
"Walk in," cried Mr. Opp, while Nick sprang to his feet. "We are just by
way of finishing up the work at hand, and have a few minutes of spare
leisure."
"I just wanted to know if you'd help us get up a town band," said Mr.
Gallop. "I told the boys you'd be too busy, but they made me come. I
asked Mr. Fallows if you was musical; but I wouldn't repeat what he
said."
"Oh, Jimmy is just naturally humoristic," said Mr. Opp. "Go along and
tell me what he remarked."
"Well," said Mr. Gallop, indignantly, "he said you was a expert on the
wind-pipe! Mr. Tucker, I believe it was, thought you used to play the
accordion."
"No," said Mr. Opp; "it was the cornet. I was considerable of a
performer at one time."
"Well, we want you for the leader of our band," said Mr. Gallop. "We are
going to have blue uniforms and give regular concerts up on Main
Street."
Nick Fenny began searching for a pencil.
"You know," went on Mr. Gallop, rapidly, "the last show boat that was
here had a calliope, and there's another one coming next week. All I
have to do is to hear a tune twice, then I can play it. Miss Guin-never
Gusty is going up to Coreyville next week, and she says she'll get us
some new pieces. She's going to select a plush self-rocker for the
congregation to give the new preacher. They're keeping it awful secret,
but I heard 'em mention it over the telephone. The preacher's baby has
been mighty sick, and so has his mother, up at the Ridge; but she's got
well again. Well, I must go along now. Ain't it warm?"
Before Mr. Opp had ceased showing Mr. Gallop out, his attention was
arrested by the strange conduct of his staff. That indefatigable youth
was writing furiously on the new wall-paper, covering the clean brown
surface with large, scrawling characters.
Mr. Opp's indignation was checked at its source by the radiant face
which Nick turned upon him.
"I've got another column!" he cried; "listen here:
"'A new and handsome Show Boat will tie up at the Cove the early part of
next week. A fine calliope will be on board.'
"'Miss Guinevere Gusty will visit friends in Coreyville soon.'
"'The new preacher will be greatly surprised soon by the gift of a fine
plush rocking-chair from the ladies of the congregation.'
"'The infant baby of the new preacher has been sick, but is better
some.'
"'Jimmy Fallows came near getting an undertaking job at the Ridge last
week, but the lady got well.'
"And that ain't all," he continued excitedly; "I'm going out now to get
all the particulars about that band, and we'll have a long story about
it."
Mr. Opp, left alone in his office, made an unsuccessful effort to resume
work. The fluttering of the "Eagle's" wings preparatory to taking flight
was not the only thing that interfered with his power of concentration.
He did not at all like the way he felt. Peculiar symptoms had developed
in the last week, and the quinine which he had taken daily had failed to
relieve him. He could not say that he was sick,--in fact, he had never
been in better health,--but there was a strange feeling of restlessness,
a vague disturbance of his innermost being, that annoyed and puzzled
him. Even as he tried to solve the problem, an irresistible impulse
brought him to his feet and carried him to the door. Miss Guinevere
Gusty was coming out of her gate in a soft, white muslin, and a chip hat
laden with pink roses.
"Anything I can do for you up street?" she called across pleasantly to
Mr. Opp.
"Why, thank you--no, the fact is--well, you see, I find it necessary for
me to go up myself." Mr. Opp heard himself saying these words with great
surprise, and when he found himself actually walking out of the office,
leaving a large amount of unfinished work, his indignation knew no
bounds.
"The sun is awful hot. Ain't you goin' to wear a hat?" drawled Miss
Guinevere.
Mr. Opp put his hand to his head in some embarrassment, and then assured
her that he very often went without it.
They sauntered slowly down the dusty road. On one side the trees hedged
them in, but on the other stretched wide fields of tasseled corn over
which shimmered waves of summer heat. White butterflies fluttered
constantly across their path, and overhead, hidden somewhere in the
branches, the birds kept up a constant song. The August sun, still high
in the heavens, shone fiercely down on the open road, on the ragweed by
the wayside, on the black-eyed Susans nodding at the light; but it fell
most mercilessly of all upon the bald spot on the head of the
unconscious Mr. Opp, who was moving, as in an hypnotic state, into the
land of romance.