Bill, The Lokil Editor
by
Bill wuz alluz fond uv children ‘nd birds ‘nd flowers. Ain’t it kind o’ curious how sometimes we find a great, big, awkward man who loves sech things? Bill had the biggest feet in the township, but I’ll bet my wallet that he never trod on a violet in all his life. Bill never took no slack from enny man that wuz sober, but the children made him play with ’em, and he’d set for hours a-watchin’ the yaller-hammer buildin’ her nest in the old cottonwood.
Now I ain’t defendin’ Bill; I’m jest tellin’ the truth about him. Nothink I kin say one way or t’other is goin’ to make enny difference now; Bill’s dead ‘nd buried, ‘nd the folks is discussin’ him ‘nd wond’rin’ whether his immortal soul is all right. Sometimes I hev worried ’bout Bill, but I don’t worry ’bout him no more. Uv course Bill had his faults,–I never liked that drinkin’ business uv his’n, yet I allow that Bill got more good out’n likker, and likker got more good out’n Bill, than I ever see before or sence. It warn’t when the likker wuz in Bill that Bill wuz at his best, but when he hed been on to one uv his bats ‘nd had drunk himself sick ‘nd wuz comin’ out uv the other end of the bat, then Bill wuz one uv the meekest ‘nd properest critters you ever seen. An’ po’try? Some uv the most beautiful po’try I ever read wuz writ by Bill when he wuz recoverin’ himself out’n one uv them bats. Seemed like it kind uv exalted an’ purified Bill’s nachur to git drunk an’ git over it. Bill c’u’d drink more likker ‘nd be sorrier for it than any other man in seven States. There never wuz a more penitent feller than he wuz when he wuz soberin’. The trubble with Bill seemed to be that his conscience didn’t come on watch quite of’n enuff.
It’ll be ten years come nex’ spring sence Bill showed up here. I don’t know whar he come from; seemed like he didn’t want to talk about his past. I allers suspicioned that he had seen trubble–maybe, sorrer. I reecollect that one time he got a telegraph,–Mr. Ivins told me ’bout it afterwards,–and when he read it he put his hands up to his face ‘nd groaned, like. That day he got full uv likker ‘nd he kep’ full uv likker for a week; but when he come round all right he wrote a pome for the paper, ‘nd the name uv the pome wuz “Mary,” but whether Mary wuz his sister or his wife or an old sweetheart uv his’n I never knew. But it looked from the pome like she wuz dead ‘nd that he loved her.
Bill wuz the best lokil the paper ever had. He didn’t hustle around much, but he had a kind er pleasin’ way uv dishin’ things up. He c’u’d be mighty comical when he sot out to be, but his best holt was serious pieces. Nobody could beat Bill writing obituaries. When old Mose Holbrook wuz dyin’ the minister sez to him: “Mr. Holbrook, you seem to be sorry that you’re passin’ away to a better land?”
“Wall, no; not exactly that,” sez Mose, “but to be frank with you, I hev jest one regret in connection with this affair.”
“What’s that?” asked the minister.
“I can’t help feelin’ sorry,” sez Mose, “that I ain’t goin’ to hev the pleasure uv readin’ what Bill Newton sez about me in the paper. I know it’ll be sumthin’ uncommon fine; I loant him two dollars a year ago last fall.”
The Higginses lost a darned good friend when Bill died. Bill wrote a pome ’bout their old dog Towze when he wuz run over by Watkins’s hay-wagon seven years ago. I’ll bet that pome is in every scrap-book in the county. You couldn’t read that pome without cryin’,–why, that pome w’u’d hev brought a dew out on the desert uv Sary. Old Tim Hubbard, the meanest man in the State, borrered a paper to read the pome, and he wuz so ‘fected by it that he never borrered anuther paper as long as he lived. I don’t more’n half reckon, though, that the Higginses appreciated what Bill had done for ’em. I never heerd uv their givin’ him anythink more’n a basket uv greenin’ apples, and Bill wrote a piece ’bout the apples nex’ day.