kle was fading from his forehead,
when one fine summer morning he brought in a paid item from a hardware
merchant, and went blithely out to write up the funeral of the wife of a
prominent citizen. He was so cheerful that day that it bothered him.

He told us in confidence that he never felt festive and gay that
something didn't happen. He was not in the building that evening when
the paper went to press, but after it was printed and the carriers had
left the office he came in, singing "She's My Sweetheart, I'm Her Beau,"
and sat down to read the paper.

Suddenly the smile on his face withered as with frost, and he handed the
paper across the table to the bookkeeper, who read this item:

DIED--MRS. LILLIAN GILSEY.

Prepare for the hot weather, my good woman. There is only one way
now; get a gasoline stove, of Hurley & Co., and you need not fear
any future heat.

And it wasn't Jimmy's fault. The foreman had merely misplaced a head
line, but that explanation did not satisfy the bereaved family.

Jimmy was beginning to acquire a reputation as a joker. People refused
to believe that such things just happened. They did not happen before
Mr. James Myers came to the paper--why should they begin with his coming
and continue during his engagement? Thus reasoned the comforters of the
Gilseys, and those interested in our downfall. The next day the
_Statesman_ wrote a burning editorial denouncing us "for an utter lack
of all sense of common decency" that permitted us "to violate the
sacredest feeling known to the human heart for the sake of getting a
ribald laugh from the unthinking." We were two weeks explaining that the
error was not the boy's fault. People assumed that the mistake could not
have occurred in any well-regulated printing office, and it didn't seem
probable that it could occur--yet there it was. But Jimmy wasn't to
blame. He suffered more than we did--more than the bereaved family did.
He went unshaven and forgot to trim his cuffs or turn his collar. He
hated to go on the streets for news, and covered with the office
telephone as much of his beat as possible.

The summer wore away and the dog days came. The Democratic State
campaign was about to open in our town, and orators and statesmen
assembled from all over the Missouri valley. There was a lack of flags
at the dry-goods stores. The Fourth of July celebration had taken all
the stock. The only materials available were some red bunting, s