New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1883-07-25
The Travelling Type-setter.

He walked silently in. We knew him
the moment we raised our eyes and saw
him standing there. In fact, we had been
expecting him; he nearly always comes
when we are in Just such strait and
needing him. He always wears the
same style of clothes-cOat of one kind
and pants of another, he hasn' t any vest,
his shoes are worn and run down at the
heels, and his hat is battered and dusty.
There are spots of ink about his shirt
which hangs over his waist-band, and
his new paper collar is the only fresh,
white thing about him, and it looks as
thouggh he had just put it on with soiled
fingers. He is pale, weak-eyed and pre-
maturely gray-haired; he looks as
though he had never known regular
hours, either for sleeping or eating, and
he must have come thousands of miles
and been coming ever since he was a
boy. His starting point was so far away,
and so long ago, that he has almost for
gotten when or where it was; but we
have an idea that it must have been
when his mother buttoned his little blue
shirt-band around his white, boyish
throat, put on his little straw hat and
sent him barefooted to ask for place
to work in the printing office. How
proud he was when he went home that
first night and showed his new brass
rule, and tells mother he has learned
all the boxes and has free ticket to the
circus next week. and the editor gave
him big piece of wedding cake, part
OF which he had brought home for the
baby, and if he sets up column in one
day next week he can go fishing on Sat
urday. Yes, somewhere about there
was the commencement of his long
journey, and here he is now, perhaps
two-thirds on the way. He asks us:
''What's the show for sit?" We give
him case, and by and by he says he
feels faint, and asks us if we can't lend
him quarter hain't had any break
fast yet We know his weakness, and,
as we need his work, we 90 down with
him and order some breakfast for him
at the nearest restaurant. When he
comes back he looks happier and better
able to work. In the evening, when he
goes to distributing his case, he re-
counts the history Of his late places of
employment. He knows the circulation
and amount of business of every paper
in the State, and just why the Dispatch
suspended and why the ADVANCE sold
out to the Courier. Heis well acquaint-
ed with the unknown editor of the
Ihatederer, and has friends on the ed
itorial force of all the leading journals
of the country. By-and-by he whistles
low an air from an Italian opera, and
in reply to a question answers with q
Latin quotation. He stays with us a
week, and we grow to like him more
and more every day; he has read every
ching from Shakespeare and Ruskin to
Mark Twain and Bill Arp; he knows
more about our laws, national and State,
than the best lawyer in the city; he is
well acquainted with the lives of every
eminent person of the age, and is per-
feet encyclopaedia of current events;
but we cannot afford to keep him any
longer, so pay him off and he again
starts on his long road that leads-not
to home, for he has none; not to the
society of intelligentpeople like himself
for outside of the printing office he is un-
known; may be back to night-work on
some city daily, or if too worn and old
for that, a rapid descentfrom one coun-
try office to another, with whisky and
laudanum for companions, to an UNI
marked grave by some lonely wayside.
Palestine IeG0s) Advoc0te.