Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1890-02-13
Help The Author Out.
A printer told the story.

A printer told the story.
Il had good job, he said, in a
Monroe Street fiction foundry-one of those
print shops where they publish stories of
the Skeleton Hunters Last Gurgling Gasp
order by the cord. 1t is the rankest kind
of rot, and is liable to give a printer
blood poisoning if he handles much of it.
! 1t is a sort of literature that induce little
! boys to get up in the night, steal the old
man pocket book, buy guns, and start
out West to rescue the imperiled maiden
from the lair of the robber chieftain and re-
| store her to her agonized parents.
! There were twenty printers and six
| liars, each full-fedged AnaniaS, working
In the place. The liars sat at the table in
one end of the room grinding out those
unwholeSOme stories as fast as we could
put them in type. One day l got a wad
of copy that was positively sickening. 1t
was about lovely girl who had been
captured and torn from her home by
! heartless white desperate and his band of
bloodthirsty Apaches. The girl was in
desperate fix. She either had to marry
! the villain or become his wife, he didn t
care which, and was then on his way to
cave In the mountains, where he was going
to have the ceremony performed
THAT night they camped in a rocky
gorge two hundred miles from nowhere
and bound the unfortunate maiden to a
tree with the usual buckskin thongs, which
cut deep into her tender wrists. Then
they all laid down and went to sleep. In
the meantime Old Zeke, the Hairy Scout,
who was ON the trail, sneaking up Just at
daylight, when people sleep the soundest
Zeke sailed In and killed twenty-five or
thirty Indians with the butt end of his
trusty rife. He didn' t want to shoot for
fear he would waken the others Then,
after he had cut a notch for each corpse in
his gun stock and hung the coarse, black
scalp-locks to his belt, he released the girl,
holsted her under his arm, jumped into
the saddle and rode away.
He rode forty-eight miles without stop
ping. When night closed in the bold
scout pulled rein and went into camp.
First he picketed his horse, and fix
ed cot of leaves for the girl, and got her
something to eat out of his saddle bags
| This was where | got In my work.
''The first thing Zeke took out of the
bags was several thick slices of fresh Vi
emma bread with honey on them. Next
came cold boiled ham, cut thin, an apple
pie cut with short, crispy, upper crust,
and last tender spring chicken, roasted a
delicate brown. Mind you, he had all this
stuff in a pair of saddle bags in the wilds
of the Rocky mountains, three hundred
miles from civilization, in the year 1885,
1t made me sick, but | resolved that the
poor girl should have one good feed if
died for it. So | showed in another para
graph like this, completing the bill of fare:
After getting the girl started Zeke
reached into the saddle bag and pulled out
a bowl of steaming hot consomme and
broiled fresh mackerel, some deviled crabs,
cold slaw, potato salad, half fry, veal
outlets Dreaded, with tomato sauce, green
corn on cob, some clam chowder, stewed
turkey, portion of rice pudding, two cups
of chocolate, pork tenderloin, Roquefort
cheese, and bottle of Bass ale, Saratoga
chips, plate of vanilla ice cream, a
Chinese paper napkin, sliced cucumbers,
some California grapes, and nickle-plated
nut cracker
did it go?" asked an interested lis
tener.
mo, it didn t, g" said the printer sadly,
''but | did. The boss came to know who
was writing that story. [ said the author
was making a stagger In that direction,
but he wasn't giving the girl a fair show
"'That may be, said the boss, but if he
wants to run a cafe In connection with the
story we hire cook and make it easier
for you
Then he told me that l was too smart to
printer, and had better go out where
the cool air would strike me. l went. -