The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1895-05-08
SELECTED STORY.
Greeley's Handwriting.

on the N6U OTh ITlOUN6 III Une
Greeley days, and who did not, conse-
quently, have "reminiscences of the
great editors copy. With this fact in
mind one evening, when old Mark
Wallis, my compositor, was sober, and
therefore in a colloquial mood, gently
led up to the subject.
Yes" he said, with the utmost con-
fidence, 81 was ON the Tribune for year
in the early sixties. l never saw much
Of Greeley's copy, as that was mostly
set by one mana hoary-headed an
achronism, who smoked cob pipe with
the corn still on it. He boosted that
he could read Greeley's copy at three
yards with one eye shut. Tangled and
terrible as it was, it was said to be
really less difficult to read when taken
in detail than you might suppose, much
of it's bad reputation having sprung
from the horror inspired in surveying a
page of it as a whole. But whether
difficult or not, there were few errors
made in setting it. | never knew of
an instance in the Tribune office like
the one once met. with in small Ohio
town, where the editor was one week
obliged to put this on his first page, af-
ter his second and third had been
printed: Ca Erratum: For " Price of
Nails" in the foreign editorial on our
inside, read Prince of Wales"
"This man of the agricultural pipe,
who was named Larkway, aud who,
hope, in the interest of archaeology, has
been preserved in some museum, was
so much given to Dragging about his
ability to read Greeey's copy that he
was burden to the office. There
came to be a tacit understanding that
an attempt must be made to hum ole
him; but when the attempt was made
it was practically failure.
"Mr. Greeley was constantly receiv-
ing offerings of the product of the earth
from rural admirers, as if he were a
sort of modern Ceres aud the Tribune
Office his temple. Sometimes it would
be big melon; again prize squash;
on another occasion a champion pump
kin. From the choice ears of corn
which he got, Larkway used to make
his pipes. Often he would not even
remove the husks, and on one occasion
these caught fire as he was studying an
obscure word, and gained considerable
Roadway before he noticed it. Some
times an aspiring country boy would
send Mr.. Greeley a whistle made out
of pigs tail, just to show that it
could be done, despite the popular be-
lief OF the contrary; and Larkway would
take one of jhese, bore hole through
it, and use it for a stem to his pipe,
thus getting, in a crude form, along
with his tobacco, that Southern staple,
hog and hominy.
Gone day worshper in Herkmer
he olt 60
two young roosters, alive. They were
of new strain, originated by the man,
and he had named it the 'Go-West'
breed. Mr.. Greeley was much inter-
ested in the new fowls, and gave the
man good notice in the agricultural
department, and cooped them under his
desk, bestowing upon them an old straw
hat for their brooding.place, since they
were not large enough to roost.
{" In fact, the man, in his eagerness
to pour out his feathery libation, had
sent these cockerels when they could
not have been over month old. They
were 80 young that they required soft
food, 30 Greeley used to bring down
corn meal and mix it up with water for
them. This pabulum, together with
the cockroaches, which they soon
learned to run to earth, constituted their
diet, and they prospered and grew. But
they had not been in the Office a fort
night before they developed trick
which brought them into disfavor.
They learned to eat the paste. They
would hop up on their owners desk and
gorge themselves from the paste-pot as
regularly as he went out, seldom leav-
ing enough to stick gumless postage
stamp. 1t was favorite plan of Gree
ley's to clip an item from loathed con-
temporary, paste it on the top of a
sheet of copy paper, and then proceed
to tear the unfortunate author of the
paragraph limb from limb, beginning
with the truculent, You lie, you vii
lain, you lie! and ending with the
crushing, We don't want to hear from
you again. Several times, when boil.
ing with rage at something he had just
clipped, he started to dab it on piece
of paper, and found the paste-pot pol
ished out like a lamp chimney, and saw
those two roosters standing about in
calm attitude almost ready to burst. He
endured it week for the sake of the
breed, but it happened once too often,
and Greeley was the one who burst.
He sent for the foreman, and said:
q" Do you see those two COMPOUNDED
young ROSTERS? They've eaten up my
paste. They're fun of it. They're wait
ing for me to get some more. 1 want
you to take 'em uD stairs, and never let
me see 'em again.
1.-The foreman tucked rooster under
either arm, and did as he was told;
and thus they came to make their home
in the posing-room.
" Here they continued to prosper,
getting plenty of cockroaches and corn
meal, with an occasional snatch at the
foreman's paste-pot; and once in a
while the galley-boy used to give them
mouthtul of news ink on the end of
column rule, which seemed to agree
with them, though this, or something
else, had bad effect on their tempers,
and they began TO fight each other a
good deal. They constantly grew more
combative, until it seemed that, instead
of haipn nollaI tho % Woa.a - 1900