PART I
On the very first day of a Christmas vacation about forty years ago Jimmie Granger broke his leg coasting. That meant six weeks in bed and no more of the wonderful coasting of that winter. Jimmie was only twelve years old, and he found it hard to lie still and be cheerful while the other fellows were having so much fun. Every day seemed a week long until he was allowed to sit up; even then each seemed three times as long as usual.
Jimmie's Uncle Francis was so sorry for his unlucky little nephew that he always brought something "to kill time" when he came to spend Sunday at Jimmie's home just outside the big city. Two weeks after the accident Jimmie received from his Uncle Francis the present he liked best of all. It was a small printing press, something entirely new to Jimmie, who had never seen one before, and never had thought very much about how books and newspapers are actually made.
"If you'll print me every week until you can walk again the Home Record, a newspaper page four columns wide and ten inches long, giving the news of the house, and of the neighborhood, too, if you like, I'll give you another double runner, a better sled than the old broken one."
"Oh, not another double runner! You don't want him to break the other leg!" cried Jimmie's mother.
"Of course not; but you don't want him to stop coasting, do you?" Uncle Francis asked his sister.
"N-o-o," replied Jimmie's mother.
"And we both think he has learned never to take the risk he took before, don't we?"
"Yes," answered Jimmie's mother.
Jimmie wanted a new double runner more than anything else, and so he went right to work on his little newspaper. The printing press was not large enough to print the paper all at once, and so it was printed in parts and these were pasted on a large sheet of paper of the size ordered.