News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1884-06-05
THE OLD PRINTER.
HIS BRAVE STRUGGLE TO SAVE
MONEY.
An Incident in Everyday Life Told by Bob
Burdette.

There was a wife, and there was boy.
Long before anyone now in the Office
had sit in the news room, press room,
business office or sanctum, and before
the old man had begun to look out at
the world through spectacles, and his
figure was as straight as it was tall, the
typos and reporters used to hear a great
deal of talk about buying lot and
building house on the hill, where he
could have a patch of garden. And by
and by he was going to quit sticking
type and get into something that would
let him stay home nights and get ac-
quainted with his family. And the suit
of clothes he bought in the fall lasted
long way into the next summer, and then
they came out again in the winter, and
the old man rushed more than he ever
did again while that dream of home was
inspiring him.
1t is an old story, this struggle of
printer to get home; any one of these
restless mariners of the land, drifting
from port to port and back again, lured by
the igniS; fdtUus of so many cents more a
thousand and price and half after
two o'clock, and big bills with four or
IL
jour printer got chance to stand at the
old mans case while he was saving
money for house and lot, and the subs
looked at him with the despairfng chances
of starvation. But it is hard, uphill
work for printer to buy a home. His
pay is easily reduced and hardly raised;
a long strike means the road for him, and
if he has a family and can't
tramp, he breaks his heart, puts
dust ON his head, and goes out of the
union and YEARLY works for the bosses
rates.
So the old man worked bravely on, as
many printer has worked before and
since his time, and the little plant in the
bank began to grow brighter as the old
clothes grew shabbier.
And the boy growing into his tenth
year used to be seen in the Office after
school, standing at his fathers elbow,
learning, in a very irregular, boyish, I'M
apprenticed fashion, with a cataract of
questions, to stick type. The old man
never intended the boy should be a
printer. And he was so proud of him
and of his standing at school; and once
the boy wrote ten-line account of a boy
falling down stairs, and a good-natured
reporter sent it in just as it came, al
though it was dull day and the scribe
wanted awfully to make it column and
put on hanging head. And the old
man sent marked copies of that paper
to every soul he knew in this world.
But one day an unbidden guest came
home from school with the boy and sat
down by the hearthstone in the old mans
rented home. And the long days of
fever and doctors bills drew out nearly
all that little bank home account, and
one black day the old mans case was
empty and the business Office told the
that all his bills would be
paid there and he mustn't take any
money from the old man.
And pale and quiet and sad, looking
old and worn, was the printer who came
next day and took his place at the case.
The types didn't click very fast in that
alley for days after that. And some
times the printers face would be lying
pathetic looked the half-filled stick in
the clasped hands, the composing rule
fallen out of place, and the pied type
and leads all tumbling together.
More than one printer, going by on
his way to empty his stick in the galley,
was long time bending down to find
the take his one followed; and more
than one, looking across at the heart
broken picture of sorrow, leaned close
down to his copy to read fair writing
that was never blurred when it came off
the hook, and griu.ed his eyes with an
unsteady hand, saying something about
the dust or the glare of the light.
And then about five years after that,
the boys mother, weary of the long pill
grimage, lay down to rest in cool
arIor, rooted with waving grass aud bfug