FullReads

I remember mighty well one incident that illustrates the point I am trying to make. We had a Sunday edition. We were rather vain of our Sunday edition. It carried a colored comic supplement and a section full of special features, and we all took a more or less righteous pride in it and tried hard to make it alive and attractive. We didn’t always succeed, but we tried all right. One Saturday night we put the Sunday to bed, and about one o’clock, when the last form was locked, three or four of us dropped into Tony’s place at the corner for a bite to eat and a drink. We hadn’t been there very long when in came the old major, and at my invitation he joined us at one of Tony’s little round tables at the back of the place. As a general thing the major didn’t patronize Tony’s. I had never heard him say so–probably he wouldn’t have said it for fear of hurting our feelings–but I somehow had gathered the impression that the major believed a gentleman, if he drank at all, should drink at his club. But it was long after midnight now and the Shawnee Club would be closed. Ike Webb spoke up presently.

“It’s a pity we couldn’t dig up the governor tonight,” he said.

The governor had come down from the state capital about noon, and all the afternoon and during most of the evening Webb had been trying to find him. There was a possibility of a big story in the governor if Webb could have found him. The major, who had been sitting there stirring his toddy in an absent-minded sort of way, spoke up casually: “I spent an hour with the governor tonight–at my club. In fact, I supped with him in one of the private dining rooms.” We looked up, startled, but the major went right along. “Young gentlemen, it may interest you to know that every time I see our worthy governor I am struck more and more by his resemblance to General Leonidas Polk, as that gallant soldier and gentleman looked when I last saw him—-“

Devore, who had been sitting next to the major, with his shoulder half turned from the old man, swung round sharply and interrupted him.

“Major,” he said, with a thin icy stream of sarcasm trickling through his words, “did you and the governor by any remote chance discuss anything so brutally new and fresh as the present political complications in this state?”

“Oh, yes,” said the major blandly. “We discussed them quite at some length–or at least the governor did. Personally I do not take a great interest in these matters, not so great an interest as I should, perhaps, take. However, I did feel impelled to take issue with him on one point. Our governor is an honest gentleman–more than that, he was a brave soldier–but I fear he is mistaken in some of his attitudes. I regard him as being badly advised. For example, he told me that no longer ago than this afternoon he affixed his official signature to a veto of Senator Stickney’s measure in regard to the warehouses of our state—-“

As Devore jumped up he overturned the major’s toddy right in the major’s lap. He didn’t stop to beg pardon, though; in fact, none of us stopped. But at the door I threw one glance backward over my shoulder. The major was still sitting reared back in his chair, with his wasted toddy seeping all down the front of his billowy shirt, viewing our vanishing figures with amazement and a mild reproof in his eyes. In the one quick glance that I took I translated his expression to mean something like this:

“Good Heavens, is this any way for a party of gentlemen to break up! This could never happen at a gentlemen’s club.”

It was a foot-race back to the office, and Devore, who had the start, won by a short length. Luckily the distance was short, not quite half a block, and the presses hadn’t started yet. Working like the crew of a sinking ship, we snatched the first page form back off the steam table and pried it open and gouged a double handful of hot slugs out of the last column–Devore blistered his fingers doing it. A couple of linotype operators who were on the late trick threw together the stick or two of copy that Webb and I scribbled off a line at a time. And while we were doing this Devore framed a triple-deck, black-face head. So we missed only one mail.