For instance, Monkey Roe's mother had employed us to print her a few copies of Mrs. Opie's poem, "The Orphan Boy," which she had known since she was a child, and very greatly admired, but of which she had never had any but a manuscript copy. While I was setting it up, three boys were carrying on an animated discussion about the city fire department, and when I took a proof of my work, I found it read like this:
Stay, lady, stay, for mercy's sake,
And hear the Brick Church bell strike the 4th District. Ah! sure my looks must pity no by crackie Orph Bo Cataract Eight can't begin to throw the stream Red Rover Three can—Tis want that makes Reliance Five wash my cheek so pale at annual inspection.
Yet I was once a mother's pride, Three's men cut her hose at the Orchard street fire before Bix Six's air chamber busted my brave father's hope and joy.
But in the Nile's proud fight he sucked Archer's well dry in three minutes and a half, and I am now Assistant Foreman of Torrent Two with a patent brake on the Orphan Boy.
I am afraid if Monkey's mother had seen that, she would hardly have recognized it as the first stanza of her favorite poem. Instead of feeling sorry for spoiling my work, the boys seemed to think it was a good joke, and nearly laughed their heads off over it. They insisted on my printing a few copies of it, just as it was, for them to keep. Next time I saw Jack-in-the-Box, he showed me one of them pasted into a little old scrap-book that he kept under his chair. On the opposite page was one of our business-cards, as printed by Ned. Jack very kindly explained to me some of the mysteries of proof-reading.
"The next thing to be done," said Ned, when the office was fairly in running order, "is to get out Jimmy the Rhymer's poems. That's what we got up the establishment for, and it'll be more profitable than all these little puttering jobs put together. And, besides, Jimmy's awful poor and needs the money. I've been around to the book-stores and told them about it. Hamilton promises to take ten copies, and Hoyt twenty-five. When they see how good the poems are, they'll be sure to double their orders; and when the other stores see the book going off like hot cakes, they'll rush in and want to buy some, but they'll have to wait their turn. First come, first served."
There were enough of Jimmy's poems to make a little book of about sixty pages, and we all went to work with a will to set the type. It would have been a pretty long job for us, as it was, but Jimmy made it a great deal longer, and nearly drove us crazy, by insisting on making changes in them after they were set up. He could not understand how much extra work this made for us, and was as particular and persistent as if his whole reputation as an author had hung on each disputed comma. Sometimes when we had four pages all ready to print, he would bring in a new stanza, to be inserted in the first page of the form, which, of course, made it necessary to change the arrangement of all the others. At last Ned got out of patience.
"You try it yourself once," said he to Jimmy, "and you'll find out whether it's easy to make all these little changes, as you call them."
| THE MEDDLESOME POET. |
Jimmy secretly made up his mind that he would try it himself. He went to the office one day when we were not there, found four pages "locked up" ready for printing, and went to work to make a few corrections. As he did not know how to unlock the form, he stood it up on edge, got a ten-penny nail and a mallet, and tried to knock out an obnoxious semicolon.
The result was a sudden bursting of the form, which rattled down into ruin at his feet, and frightened the meddlesome poet out of his wits.