"Our genial chief was so much pleased this morning over the impression made yesterday by his apparently severe, but really good-natured leader on the recent defalcation of our genial city clerk, Charley Hymes, that he took the local to his arms and stood treat to a number-one mackerel, and the ever appreciative local picked the bones of the aforesaid saline preserved denizen of the deep, in the bosom of his family at dinner to-day."
That was Mose Harbell's idea of humor. It was not Braine's idea of humor at all, and so Mose was greeted with the harshest reproof he had ever received in his life when he next met his chief. He accepted it "genially."
Having sent out the offending paragraph, Mose went out himself to gather river news, and such gossip as he might, concerning the genial folk of Thebes.
Then Abner Hildreth entered the office, and for two hours was closeted with Braine.
Then Braine committed suicide.
Then he wrote his own obituary, to be printed in that evening's Enterprise.
Then he went supperless to his room over a store, where he paced the floor till dawn.
Then began the man's extraordinary career.