And it wasn't Jimmy's fault. The foreman had merely misplaced a head line, but that explanation did not satisfy the bereaved family.
Jimmy was beginning to acquire a reputation as a joker. People refused to believe that such things just happened. They did not happen before Mr. James Myers came to the paper—why should they begin with his coming and continue during his engagement? Thus reasoned the comforters of the Gilseys, and those interested in our downfall. The next day the Statesman wrote a burning editorial denouncing us "for an utter lack of all sense of common decency" that permitted us "to violate the sacredest feeling known to the human heart for the sake of getting a ribald laugh from the unthinking." We were two weeks explaining that the error was not the boy's fault. People assumed that the mistake could not have occurred in any well-regulated printing office, and it didn't seem probable that it could occur—yet there it was. But Jimmy wasn't to blame. He suffered more than we did—more than the bereaved family did. He went unshaven and forgot to trim his cuffs or turn his collar. He hated to go on the streets for news, and covered with the office telephone as much of his beat as possible.
The summer wore away and the dog days came. The Democratic State campaign was about to open in our town, and orators and statesmen assembled from all over the Missouri valley. There was a lack of flags at the dry-goods stores. The Fourth of July celebration had taken all the stock. The only materials available were some red bunting, some white bunting, and some blue bunting with stars dotted upon it. With this bunting the Committee on Reception covered the speakers' stand, wrapping the canopy under which the orators stood in the solid colours and the star-spangled blue. It was beautiful to see, and the pride of the window-dresser of the Golden Eagle Clothing Store. But the old soldiers who walked by nudged one another and smiled.
About noon of the day of the speaking the City Clerk, who wore the little bronze button of the G. A. R., asked Jimmy if he didn't want someone to take care of the Democratic meeting. Jimmy, who hated politics, was running his legs off to get the names of the visitors, and was glad to have the help. He turned in the contributed copy without reading it, as he had done with the City Clerk's articles many times before, and this is what greeted his horrified eyes when he read the paper:
"UNDER THE STARS & BARS"
Democracy Opens Its State Campaign Under the
Rebel Emblem To-day
A Fitting Token
Treasonable Utterances Have a Proper Setting
And then followed half a column of most violent abuse of the Democrats who had charge of the affair. Jimmy did not appear on the street that night, but the next morning, when he came down, the office was crowded with indignant Democrats "stopping the paper."
We began to feel uneasy about Jimmy. So long as his face was in the eclipse of grief there seemed to be a probability that we would have no trouble, but as soon as his moon began to shine we were nervous.
Jimmy had a peculiar knack of getting up little stories of the town—not exactly news stories, but little odd bits that made people smile without rancour when they saw their names in the quaintly turned items. One day he wrote up a story of a little boy whose mother asked him where he got a dollar that he was flourishing on his return with his father from a visit in Kansas City. The little boy's answer was that his father gave it to him for calling him uncle when any ladies were around. It was merrily spun, and knowing that it would not make John Lusk, the boy's father, mad, we printed it, and Jimmy put at the head of it a foolish little verse of Kipling's. Miss Larrabee, at the bottom of her society column, announced the engagement of two prominent young people in town. The Saturday paper was unusually readable. But when Jimmy came in after the paper was out he found Miss Larrabee in tears, and the foreman leaning over the counter laughing so that he couldn't speak. It wasn't Jimmy's fault. The foreman had done it—by the mere transposition of a little brass rule separating the society news from Jimmy's story with the Kipling verse at the head of it. The rule tacked the Kipling verse onto Miss Larrabee's article announcing the engagement. Here is the way it read:
"This marriage, which will take place at St. Andrew's Church, will unite two of the most popular people in town and two of the best-known families in the State.