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 entitled 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.
[Illustration: 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 embarrassing, but it wasn't exactly the boy's fault. It was just
one of those unfortunate circumstances 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 assumed 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
assembled 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 button 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 Saturday 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 brass 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 scrapbooks. We were proud of
Jimmy, and assigned 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 sextette 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 assembled 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.
Public sentiment would no longer stand him as a reporter on the paper,
and we gave him a good letter and sent him onward and upward. He took
his dismissal decently enough. He realised that his luck was against
him; he knew that we had borne with him in all patience.
The day that he left he was instructing the new man in the ways of the
town. Reverend Frank Milligan came in with a church notice. Jimmy took
the notice and began marking it for the printer. As the door behind him
opened and closed, Jimmy, with his head still in his work, called across
the room to the new man: "That was old Milligan that just went
out--beware of him. He will load you up with truck about himself. He
rings in his sermons; trots around with church social notices that ought
to be paid for, and tries to get them in free; likes to be referred to
as doctor; slips in mean items about his congregation, if you don't
watch him; and insists on talking religion Saturday morning when you are
too busy to spit. More than that, he has an awful breath--cut him out;
he will make life a burden if you don't--and if you do he will go to the
old man with it, and say you are not treating him right."
[Illustration: Reverend Milligan came in with a church notice]
There was a rattling and a scratching on the wire partition between
Jimmy and the door. Jimmy looked up from his work and saw the sprightly
little figure of Parson Milligan coming over the railing like a monkey.
He had not gone out of the door--a printer had come in when it opened
and shut. And then Jimmy took his last flying trip out of the back door
of the office, down the alley, "toward the sunset's purple rim." It was
not his fault. He was only telling the truth--where it would do the most
good.
XII
"'A Babbled of Green Fields"
Our town is set upon a hillside, rising from a prairie stream. Forty
years ago the stream ran through a thick woodland nearly a mile wide,
and in the woodland were stately elms, spreading walnut trees, shapely
oaks, gaunt white sycamores, and straight, bushy hackberries, that shook
their fruit upon the ice in spots least frequented by skaters. Along the
draws that emptied into the stream were pawpaw trees, with their tender
foliage, and their soft wood, which little boys delighted to cut for
stick horses. Beneath all these trees grew a dense underbrush of
buckeyes, blackberries, raspberries, gooseberries, and little red winter
berries called Indian beads by the children. Wild grapevines, "poison"
grapes, and ivies of both kinds wove the woods into a mass of summer
green. In the clearings and bordering the wood grew the sumach, that
flared red at the very thought of Jack Frost's coming. In these woods
the boys of our town--many of whom have been dead these twenty
years--used to lay their traps for the monsters of the forest, and
trudged back from the timber before breakfast, in winter, bringing home
redbirds, and rabbits and squirrels. Sometimes a particularly doughty
woodsman would report that there were wildcat tracks about his trap; but
none of us ever saw a wildcat, though Enoch Haver, whose father's father
had heard a wildcat scream, and had taught the boy its cry, would hide
in a hollow sycamore and screech until the little boys were terrified
and would not go alone to their traps for days. In summer, boys, usually
from the country, or from a neighbouring town, caught 'coons, and
dragged them chained through alleys for our boys to see, and 'Dory Paine
had an owl which was widely sought by other boys in the circus and
menagerie line. The boys of our town in that day seemed to live in the
wood and around the long millpond, though little fellows were afraid
that lurking Indians or camping gypsies might steal them--a boy's
superstition, which experience has proved too good to be true. They
fared forth to the riffle below the dam, which deepens in the shade
under the water elm; this was the pool known as "baby hole," despised of
the ten-year-olds, who plunged into the deepest of the thicket and came
out at the limekiln, where all day long one might hear "so-deep,
so-deep, so-deep," and "go-round, go-round, go-round," until school
commenced in the fall. Then the rattle of little homemade wagons, and
the shrilling of boy voices might be heard all over the wilderness, and
the black-stained hands of schoolboys told of the day of the walnut
harvest. It was nearly a mile from the schoolhouse to the woods, and yet
on winter afternoons no school-ma'am could keep the boys from using
school hours to dig out the screw-holes and heel-plates of their boots
before wadding them with paper. At four o'clock a troop of boys would
burst forth from that schoolhouse so wildly that General Durham of the
_Statesman_, whose office we used to pass with a roar, always looked up
from his work to say: "Well, I see hell's out for noon again."
In the spring the boys fished, and on Saturdays go, up the river or
down, or on either side, where one would, one was never out of sight of
some thoughtful boy, sitting either on a stump or on a log stretching
into the stream, or squatting on a muddy bank with his worm can beside
him, throwing a line into the deep, green, quiet water. Always it was to
the woods one went to find a lost boy, for the brush was alive with
fierce pirates, and blood-bound brother-hoods, and gory Indian fighters,
and dauntless scouts. Under the red clay banks that rose above the
sluggish stream, robbers' caves, and treasure houses, and freebooters'
dens, were filled with boys who, five days in the week and six hours a
day, could "_amo amas amat, amamus amatus amant_" with the best of them.
On Sundays these same boys sat with trousers creeping above the wrinkles
at the ankles of their copper-toed, red-topped boots, recited golden
texts, sang "When He Cometh," and while planning worse for their own
little brothers, read with much virtuous indignation of little Joseph's
wicked brothers, who put him in a pit. After Sunday School was over
these highly respected young persons walked sedately in their best
clothes over the scenes of their Saturday crimes.
They say the woods are gone now. Certainly the trees have been cut away
and the underbrush burned; cornfields cover the former scenes of
valorous achievement; but none the less the woods are there; each nook
and cranny is as it was, despite the cornfields. Scattered about the sad
old earth live men who could walk blindfolded over the dam, across the
millrace, around the bend, through the pawpaw patch to the grapevine
home of the "Slaves of the Magic Tree;" who could find their trail under
the elder bushes in Boswell's ravine, though they should come--as they
often come--at the dead of night from great cities and from mountain
camps and from across seas, and fore-gather there, in the smoke and dirt
of the rendezvous to eat their unsalted sacrificial rabbit. They can
follow the circuitous route around John Betts's hog lot, to avoid the
enemy, as easily to-day as they could before the axe and the fire and
the plough made their fine pretence of changing the landscape. And when
Joe Nevison gets ready to signal them from his seat high in the crotch
of the oak tree across the creek, the "Slaves of the Tree" will come and
obey their leader. They say that the tree is gone, and that Joe is gone,
but we know better; for at night, when the Tree has called us, and we
hear the notes from the pumpkin-stem reed, we come and sit in the
branches beneath him and plan our raids and learn our passwords, and
swear our vengeance upon such as cross our pathway. There may have been
a time when men thought the Slaves of the Tree were disbanded; indeed it
did seem so, but as the years go by, one by one they come wandering
back, take their places in the branches of the magic tree, swing far out
over the world like birds, and summon again the _genius loci_ who has
slept for nearly forty years.
Of course we knew that Joe would be the first one back; he didn't care
what they said--even then; he registered his oath that it made no
difference what they did to him or what the others did, he would never
desert the Tree. He commanded all of us to come back; if not by day then
to gather in the moonlight and bring our chicken for the altar and our
eggs for the ceremony, and he promised that he would be there. We were
years and years in obeying Joe Nevison. Many of us have had long
journeys to go; and some of us lead little children by the hand as we
creep up the hollow, crawl through the gooseberry bushes, and 'coon the
log over the chasm to our meeting place. But we are nearly all there
now; and in the moonlight, when the corn seems to be waving over a wide
field, a tree springs up as by magic and we take our places again as of
old.
Many years have passed since Marshal Furgeson stood those seven Slaves
of the Magic Tree in line before the calaboose door and made them
surrender the feathered cork apple-stealers and the sacred chicken
hooks. In those years many terrors have ridden the boys who have gone
out into the world to fight its dragons and grapple with its gorgons;
but never have those boys felt any happiness so sweet as that which
rested on their hearts when they heard the Marshal say, "Now you boys
run on home--but mind you if I ever----" and he never did--except Joe
Nevison. Once it was for boring a hole in the depot platform and
tapping a barrel of cider; once it was for going through a window in the
Hustler hardware store and taking a box of pocketknives and two
revolvers, with which to reward his gang, and finally, when the boy was
in the midst of his teens, for breaking into the schoolhouse and burning
the books. Joe's father always bought him off, as fathers always can buy
boys off, when mothers go to the offended person and promise, and beg,
and weep. So Joe Nevison grew up the town bad boy--defiant of law,
reckless and unrestrained, with the blood of border ruffianism in his
veins and the scorn of God and man and the love of sin in his heart. The
week after he left town, and before he was twenty, his father paid for
"Red" Martin's grey race horse, which disappeared the night Joe's bed
was found empty. In those days the Nevisons had more money than most of
the people in our town, but as the years went by they began to lose
their property, and it was said that it went in great slices to Joe, to
keep him out of the penitentiary.