Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1878-07-28
Ruth's Composition.

In shabby little house, IN a shabby
little street. call it street simply out
of compliments being in reality only
an alley that had started out to be a
street and finding itself too narrow by
half had stopped at the end of two blocks
and never gone any further-lived a
shabby old man, called by his neighbocs
"Mr. Waste Paper" and by rude boys and
girls of the neighborhood cod Mlser"
and "Queer Eyes"
He bought and sold waste paper, and
all the four rooms in his house-he was
the only one in the street that occupied q
whole house and was looked upon with
great respect on that account-in fact, [
think if he had only rented room or
two like the rest of the inhabitants be
would have been :.Waste Paper john"
instead of ''Mr. Waste Paper'-werc
almost filed With it.
One, indeed, the largest, was filled to
the very ceiling, only narrow pathway
being lett in the center like small val
ley between two steep mountains.
A deep drift like snow lay upon the
floors of the two other rooms, and hun-
dreds of books FROM which the covers
had departed forever, old magazines,
used up ledgers, torn hand bills and Cir
culars. we're stacked along the walls, and
in the fourth room, where the old man
ate and slept, all the furniture, with the
exception of tiny stove, gridiron, a
saucepan, and tea-kettle; was made of
paper. Ottomans formed out of news
papers laid neatly one upon the other, a
bed built of some twenty large bundles
of coarse brown paper with an old Web
ster's Unabridged'' for pillow; table
made by placing six big account books
on the floor, six more on the top OF them,
and so on until enough had been used.
All legless, Of course, but serving MI.
Waste Paper as we'll as though they had
any numper of legs.
You never saw such queer place in
your life, and never heard such continual
rustling aud cracking as the furniture
kept up, and very likely you never met
such vorv odd old man."
One shoulder was little higher and
one leg a little shorter than the other,
and he had one black eye and one blue
one. And when he was good natured he
looked at you with the blue one, and
when he is cross he looked at you with the
black one, and don't think there could
ever have been two more expressive eyes
in the world-one could look so cross and
the other so kind.
Well, nobody III Sam street-that is
what they called the ambitions alley,
after old Sam Junkman, who built the
first house there fifty years ago--knew
anything about Mr.. Waste Paper. except
that he had lived IN the four roomed
house for the last ten years, and that the
only person he was at all friendly with was
Mrs. Dolf, the kid-glove cleaner, who
lived next door, and who boiled the water
for his tea on summer evenings, when he
had no fire at home.
Mrs Dolfs children, Amos and Cherry,
liked the old man very we'll, for he used
often to give them pretty pictures which
he cut from the picture papers which fell
in his possession, and, more rarely, a
penny or two; but the other Sam street
children called him "old miser," because
he gave them nothing, and because they
heard their fathers and mothers say,
"Waste Paper has a good sum Of money
in some bank or other, you may bet, for
he's been buying and selling Tor ten
years and never had days sickness,
and wearing the same old clothes, sum-
mer and winter, and not a chick or q
child, or dog, or q cat to look after, and
never asking anybody to have drop Of
beer or pipe of 'haccy. He's a regular
old miser. that's what he is"
But the old man paid no attention to
the rude boys and girls. except to turn
his black eye on them once in while
when they became too annoying, but
passed his time when at home reading
something from his stock in trade, or,
with eyes half closed in deep thought
about what no one but himself ever knew,
when one bright, warm May day, he came
slowly into his living room from the
street, carrying heavy bag on his
shoulder.
He placed the Dag upon paper otto
man, sat down on the paper bed beside
he paper table, wiped his face with
handkerchief, and then opened the bag
and tumbled the contents out upon the
paper carpet He had bought them that
morning of school teacher who lived at
the other end of the town, four miles
away, duet llOy SolioAoICNA VI oollC0 Copy-
books, old grammars; biographies, arith-
metics, histories, readers, with as many
dogs ears as would have supplied several
large dog families, old reports and old
compositions from the pile before him,
he began to talk to himself, as people
who live lonely life are sometimes in
the habit Of doing. Gall these long years."
he said, land I have never found any
thing of value. No wills, no bank notes.
no trace of my lost mily-nothing
that people in my business are
always finding in stories," and as he said
this his black eye fell upon name
written in child's struggling hand on
the back of one Of the papers he had
Ruth Sands Norris" and underneath,
in the teachers writing, Every good, in
deed, for little girl of ten"
The old man hastily united the ribbon
with trembling hands, and with strange
light breaking over his wrinkled face,
unrolled the paper, turning his blue eye
upon it, began to read. And this is what
he read:
A STORY.
Some girls girls well, anyhow
a good many girls do not like to write
composition. do.
When l grow up I hope to be an ar