In Our Town

by William Allen White

"And this is the sorrowful story
Told as the twilight fails,
While the monkeys are walking together,
Holding each other's tails!"

Now, Jimmy was no more to blame than Miss Larrabee, and many people thought, and think to this day, that Miss Larrabee did it—and did it on purpose. But for all that it cast clouds over the moon of Jimmy's countenance, and it was nearly a year before he regained his merry heart. He was nervous, and whenever he saw a man coming toward the office with a paper in his hand Jimmy would dash out of the room to avoid the meeting. For an hour after the paper was out the ringing of the telephone bell would make him start. He didn't know what was going to happen next.

But as the months rolled by he became calm, and when Governor Antrobus died, Jimmy got up a remarkably good story of his life and achievements, and though there was no family left to the dear old man to buy extra copies, all the old settlers—who are the hardest people in the world to please—bought extra copies for their scrapbooks. We were proud of Jimmy, and assigned him to write up the funeral. That was to be a "day of triumph in Capua." There being no relatives to interfere, the lodges of the town—and the Governor was known as a "jiner"—had vied with one another to make the funeral the greatest rooster-feather show ever given in the State. The whole town turned out, and the foreman of our office, and everyone in the back room who could be spared, was at the Governor's funeral, wearing a plume, a tin sword, a red leather belt, or a sash of some kind. We put a tramp printer on to make up the paper, and told Jimmy to call by the undertaker's for a paid local which the undertaker had written for the paper that day.

Jimmy's face was beaming as he snuggled up to his desk at three o'clock that afternoon. He said he had a great story—names of the pall-bearers, names of the double sextette choir, names of all the chaplains of all the lodges who read their rituals, names of distinguished guests from abroad, names of the ushers at the church. Page by page he tore off his copy and gave it to the tramp printer, who took it in to the machines. Trusting the foreman to read the proof, Jimmie rushed out to get from a United States Senator who was attending the funeral an interview on the sugar scandal, for the Kansas City Star.

The rest of us did not get back from the cemetery until the carriers had left the office, and this is what we found:

"The solemn moan of the organ had scarcely died away, like a quivering sob upon the fragrant air, when the mournful procession of citizens began filing past the flower-laden bier to view the calm face of their beloved friend and honoured townsman. In the grief-stricken hush that followed might be heard the stifled grief of some old comrade as he paused for the last time before the coffin.

"At this particular time we desire to call the attention of our readers to the admirable work done by our hustling young undertaker, J. B. Morgan. He has been in the city but a short time, yet by his efficient work and careful attention to duty, he has built up an enviable reputation and an excellent custom among the best families of the city. All work done with neatness and dispatch. We strive to please.

"When the last sad mourner had filed out, the pall-bearers took up their sorrowful task, and slowly, as the band played the 'Dead March in Saul,' the great throng assembled in the street viewed the mortal remains of Governor Antrobus start on their last long journey."

Of course it wasn't Jimmy's fault. The "rising young undertaker" had paid the tramp printer, who made up the forms, five dollars to work his paid local into the funeral notice. But after that—Jimmy had to go. Public sentiment would no longer stand him as a reporter on the paper, and we gave him a good letter and sent him onward and upward. He took his dismissal decently enough. He realised that his luck was against him; he knew that we had borne with him in all patience.

The day that he left he was instructing the new man in the ways of the town. Reverend Frank Milligan came in with a church notice. Jimmy took the notice and began marking it for the printer. As the door behind him opened and closed, Jimmy, with his head still in his work, called across the room to the new man: "That was old Milligan that just went out—beware of him. He will load you up with truck about himself. He rings in his sermons; trots around with church social notices that ought to be paid for, and tries to get them in free; likes to be referred to as doctor; slips in mean items about his congregation, if you don't watch him; and insists on talking religion Saturday morning when you are too busy to spit. More than that, he has an awful breath—cut him out; he will make life a burden if you don't—and if you do he will go to the old man with it, and say you are not treating him right."