Wasn’t it lucky that English had always been Joan’s favorite and easiest subject at school? She could judge the letters with a critical eye. Chub wasn’t much use that way. He didn’t recognize bad grammar even when it stared him in the face. But he was a big help, for he knew the baseball stuff. “This one sounds good,” he’d say. “But it’s something he’s read somewhere. He hasn’t thought it up himself.”
The Journal was offering two prizes. The first was to be a check for twenty-five dollars. Uncle John had offered it himself. The second prize was two seats to the best baseball game of the season in Ohio, to be played that year in Cleveland. Not only that, but the lucky winner would be introduced to Babe Ruth and would be given a baseball autographed by the famous player. The second prize, so every one thought, was about as nice as the first prize, and was worth as much in actual money, for all expenses were to be paid for the trip, the car fare, tickets, and so on, having been donated. It was the kind of prize to fascinate a boy. And yet, twenty-five dollars was a lot of money.
When the contest ended, Joan and Chub had narrowed the letters down to two which were decidedly better than the rest. This afternoon’s paper was to announce the prize winners. Mr. Nixon had handed the two best letters back to Joan, with, “You might as well do it all. You decide which one’s best. They both look good to me.”
Joan sighed again as she stared at the two letters before her. “I wish one of the rules of the contest had been for the boys to use pen names,” she said to herself. “Then I wouldn’t know who was who.”
She was sitting at the long, crowded table that stretched across the middle of the editorial room; the desks were all around the windows and walls. She had cleared a space on the table; it was here, every day for the past weeks, she and Chub had read the letters written by the boy readers of the Journal.
Joan realized she would have to make up her mind, now, for Tim, who was writing up the announcement story, was looking over his typewriter at her for the names. The two letters seemed almost equally good, but one written by fifteen-year-old Eric Reynolds was slightly better than the other one, which was signed, “Jimmy Kennedy, age thirteen.” Joan knew of the Reynolds family—they lived in a big place, with a sunken garden and a tall, iron fence all around. Too bad a rich boy like Eric had submitted a letter. Well, she might give him the second prize—the trip to the game and the autographed ball. He didn’t need the money, and from Jimmy Kennedy’s address on South Washington Street, she knew that he lived in one of the soot-streaked, gray-painted houses, which had their back yards cut into triangles by the railroad running along there. Jimmy ought to have the money prize. Yet his letter wasn’t quite as good as Eric’s. But Eric was rich, and Jimmy was poor. Rich boy, poor boy! It reminded her of
Rich man, poor man,
Beggarman, thief,
Doctor, lawyer,
Merchant, chief!