The Neihart herald. [volume] (Neihart, Mont.) 1890-1901, 1892-08-20
Tho Old Printer.

among the boys on a morning paper.
He went to bed about the time the
rest of the world got up, and he
arose about the time the rest of the
world sat down to dinner. He
worked by every kind of light except
sunlight. There were candles in
the office when he came in; then
they had lard oil lamps that smoked
and sputtered and smelled; then he
saw to or three printers blinded by
explosions of camphor and spirit gas;
then kerosene came in and heated up
the news-room on summer nights
like furnace; then the Office put in
gas, and now the electric light
swung from the ceiling and dazzled
his old eyes and glared into them
from his copy. If he sang on his
way home policeman bade him
sscheese that" and reminded him that
he was disturbing the peace and
people wanted sleep. But when he
wanted to sleep the rest of the world,
for whom he had sat up all night to
make a morning paper, roared and
crashed down the noisy streets under
his window, with cart and truck and
omnibus; blared with the brass band,
howled with the hand-organs, talked
and shouted and even shrieking
newsboys with ghastly sarcasm,
murdered the sleep of the tired old
printer by calling the name of his
own paper.
Year after year the foreman roared
at him to remember that this wasn':
an afternoon paper, editors shrieked
down the tube to have a blind man
put on that dead mans case; smart
young proof readers scribbled sar-
castia comments on his work on the
margin of his proof slips, they didn't
know how to read; long winded cor
respondents learning to write, and
long haired poets who could never
learn to spell, wrathfully cast all
their imperfections upon his head.
But through it all he wrought pa
tiently, and found more sunshine
than shadow in the world; he had
more friends than enemies. Printers
and foremen and pressmen and re-
porters came and went but he stayed,
and he saw news room andsanctum
filled and emptied again and filled
again with new strange faces. He
believed in his craft, and to the end
he had a silent pity, that came as
neal being contempt as his good for
giving heart could feel, for an editor
who had not worked his way from a
regular devilship up past the case
and the imposing stones.
He worked all that night, and
when the hours that are so short in
the ball room and SO long in the
composing room drew wearily on, he
was tired. He hadn't thrown in
very full case, he said, and he had to
climb clear into the boxes and chase
a type up into corner before he
could get hold of 1t. One of the
boys, tired as himself-but printer
is never too tired to be good natured,
offered to change place with him, but
the old man said there was enough
in the case to last him through this
take, and he wouldn't work any more
tonight. The type clicked in the
silent room and by and by the old
man said:
"I'm out of Sorts"
And he sat down on the low win
dow sill by his case with his stick In
his hand, his hand folded YEARLY in
his lap. The type clicked on. A
galley of telegraph waited.
"What gentleman is lingering
with d 1872" called the foreman, who
was always dangerously polished and
polite when he was on the point of
exploding with wrath and impatience.
Slug Nine, passing by the alley,
stopped to speak to the old man sit
ting there so quietly.
The telegraph boy came running
in with the last manifold sheet,
shouting:
"Thirty!"
They carried the old man to the
foreman's long table and layed him
down reverently and covered his face.
They took the stick out of his nerve
less hand and read his last take:
"BosroN, Nov. %. The Ameri
can bark Pilgrim went to pieces off
Marblehead in a light gale about
midnight. She was old and unsea-
worthy, and this was to have been
her last trip