And gave a little sigh of relief. It was to be a long, perhaps an endless battle with self. But he had started.
V—TIGER, TIGER!
1
Miss Amelia Dittenhoefer was a figure in Sunbury. She had taught two generations of its young in the old Filbert Avenue school. And during more than ten years, since relinquishing that task, she had supplied the 'Society,' 'Church Doings,' 'Woman's Realm,' and 'Personal Mention' departments of the Voice with their regular six to eight columns of news and gossip.
And as several hundred Sunbury men and women had once been her boys and girls, this sort of personal news came to her from every side. Her 'children,' of whatever present age, accepted her as an institution, like the university building, General Grant, or Lake Michigan. She never had a desk in the Voice office, but worked at home or moving briskly about the town. Home, to her, was the rather select, certainly high-priced boarding-house of Mrs Clark on Simpson Street, over by the lake, where she had lived, at this time, for twenty-one or twenty-two years. She was little, neat, precise, and doubtless (as I look back on those days) equipped for much more important work than any she ever found to do in Sunbury. But Woman's sun had hardly begun to rise then.
As Henry had been, at the age of six, one of her boys, and during the past two years had shared with her the reporting work of the Voice, it was not unnatural that she should stop him as he was hurrying, airily twirling his thin bamboo stick, over to Stanley's restaurant. It was noontime. Simpson Street was quiet. They walked along past Donovan's drug store and Jackson's book store (formerly B. F. Jones's) and turned the corner. Here, in front of an unfrequented photographer's studio, Miss Dittenhoefer stated her problem. She looked, though her trim little person was erect as always, rather beaten down.
'Mr Boice has taken half my work, Henry—“Church Doings” and “Society.” He sent me a note. I gather that you're to do it.'
'Me?' Henry spoke in honest amazement.