Life — August 5, 1915 — page 15: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

stepped from his office to look toward the corner where Johnson usually sat. ch time a vacant chair aggravated his anger. It was nearly eleven o'clock when the ringing telephone bell called his attention from the proof before him. He jerked the receiver from its hook. “Johnson, eh? I wanted you half a dozen times this afternoon and eve- ning, but now you needn't come in at all, You're through. He jammed the receiver back with a glow of satisfaction in having good reason to discharge an incompetent. The telephone bell rang again. This time the city editor listened. “You've got the cashier locked up in your room!” he fairly yelled. “ All right! All right!” Shaking with excitement he wheeled from the telephone. “Brail! Jack! Fredericks!” He roared the names into the local room in sharp succession. Like soldiers at a bugle call men sprang from desks where they were working or idling. “You, Jack, get on the ‘phone and take a story from Johnson! He's got the biggest beat that ever was pulled off in the city of New York.” The rewrite man settled himself at the wire. At the other end of it Johnson, in his room at the cheap hotel where he lived, struggled to be calm in, this moment of triumph. He began to dictate. Near him, well within range vision, sat his willing prisoner. of Not “EERE once since they left the newspaper office together had the cashier been out of Johnso: sight. Helpless, hopeless, but with a conscience no longer heavily burdened, the unfor- tunate man listened now just as he had listened while the reporter, with- out betraying his source of informa- tion, craftily verified by telephone the wandering confession. Clear and without interruption the stream of dictation poured over the wire. The story was written as a newspaper story should be written, and when it was told it ended. That's all,” sighed Johnson proudly. “Til hold him here till two o'clock to make the beat an absolute cinch. Then T'll 'phone the police.” In the newspaper office the rewrite man had hardly drummed out the last line of copy before the sheet of paper was snatched from his typewriter and rushed in the wake of former scud- ding sheets to the composing-room, just in time for the first edition. “There never was a beat like it,” cried the exultant city editor. “I don’t see how he landed it.” “It's a great piece of newspaper work,” agreed the managing editor. “No man in the country could have done better, Who is Johnson?” “A new man, but I've taught him the game already, He didn’t wait for any assignment—just went right out and dug that cashier up.” The city editor’s voice cracked with enthu- siasm. “That's the kind of newspaper men we turn out in little old New York.” Approximating the Ultimate With Aunt Sarah ‘By Charles Earl Gaymon UNT SARAH was sixty-three years old. Uncle John was sixty- four years old. If you spoke to Aunt Sarah about any new fringe on the tapestry of the intellectual loom she would say: “Oh, yes, we ‘proximated that line of thought in 1893. It is near, but not quite the ultimate.” If you spoke to Uncle John about Schopenhauer he would reply: “T don't take much stock in them new-fangled cultivators.” Uncle John and Aunt Sarah had lived together in the old homestead for thirty-eight years. Aunt Sarah always had intellectual curiosity: she had left the old Baptist church in her girlhood to join a joy cult; she had followed with her mental telescope the scintillating trajectory of William James's flight through the 235 philosophic heavens of America; she had known about eugenics long before the newspapers had made the subject popular knowledge, and she had played in the musty, rickety garret of occult- ism at a time when the most daring minds in science were sitting tight in the seats of the scornful. But there was a shadow in the sunlight of Aunt Sarah's mental advancement, an opaque spot in the crystal of her mysticism, an unresolved seventh in the harmon, of her simple life in the Wisconsin backwoods— She was married, She was married to Uncle John! At six o'clock in the evening of June 1, 1915, Aunt Sarah glanced up from reading Bennett's “Folk W: and Mores” as Uncle John entered the kitchen door, Uncle John had just come from performing the vespertine chores. “Pa, we shall have to get a di- voree!" said Aunt Sarah, shutting Bennett with determination. “ Mar- riage is a worn-out convention only one of the thousand foolish folk ways that hinder the advancement of science among the masse: “Very well, ma.” “We will get a divorce.” “T quite agree, ma.” “Don't attempt logic with me, John. I said that we would get a divorce.” Uncle John shook his head. “ When will it be?” he asked. “To-morrow.” Uncle John smiled, dropped his arm- ful of kindling into the wood box be- hind the kitchen range, and began to lay the Brobdingnagian bandana hand- kerchief that served them for a table cloth, Aunt Sarah finished the prepara- tion of the bacon and onions and set the coffee pot back when it began to boil. After supper Uncle John read the seed catalog and Aunt Sarah resumed her Bennett. The following afternoon Judge Thompson, who lived in the biggest and best house in the little county seat, was surprised to sce from his chair in the big bay window an anti- quated carriage drawn by a retired farm horse draw up before his cast- iron negro hitching post. In the car- comicbooks.com