At length one prevailed. He seized his opponent, and raising him high above his head, hurled him into space.
The vanquished combatant shot through the air like a stone from a catapult in the direction of the luminous earth.
“That’s three of ’em this week,” said the Man in the Moon as he lit a cigarette and turned back into the house. “Those New York interviewers are going to make me tired if they keep this thing up much longer.”
Three Paragraphs
“Copy,” yelled the small boy at the door. The sick woman lying on the bed began to move her fingers aimlessly upon the worn counterpane. Her eyes were bright with fever; her face, once beautiful, was thin and pain drawn. She was dying, but neither she nor the man who held her hand and wrote on a paper tablet knew that the end was so near.
Three paragraphs were lacking to fill the column of humorous matter that the foreman had sent for. The small pay it brought them barely furnished shelter and food. Medicine was lacking but the need for that was nearly over.
The woman’s mind was wandering; she spoke quickly and unceasingly, and the man bit his pencil and stared at the pad of paper, holding her slim, hot hand.
“Oh, Jack; Jack, papa says no, I cannot go with you. Not love you! Jack, do you want to break my heart? Oh, look, look! the fields are like heaven, so filled with flowers. Why have you no ice? I had ice when I was at home. Can’t you give me just a little piece, my throat is burning?”
The humourist wrote: “When a man puts a piece of ice down a girl’s back at a picnic, does he give her the cold shoulder?”
The woman feverishly put back the loose masses of brown hair from her burning face.