f getting ready; then
Johnny took hold.

But one day Bobby, walking glumly over to the composing stone, suggested
something new.

"Let's start a newspaper," said he.

The clang of the press came to an abrupt stop.

"Let's start a newspaper," he repeated. "We've got enough pica to print
one page at a time."

Rashly Johnny agreed. All went well until it came time to print the
sheet. Eighteen subscribers were secured at five cents a copy. Johnny
and Bobby wrote the entire number between them. Bobby set it up,
happily. Johnny, also happily, turned out certain letter-heads at the
press. Then came time to print. And at that moment trouble began.

The first copy was legible but smudgy. Bobby was not satisfied and
attempted improvement, most of which, so far from improving, gave cause
for fresh defects. Johnny was standing about impatiently.

"Come on," said he at last, "that's good enough. They can read it, all
right, and those few letters don't matter. Let it go at that."

But Bobby shook his head and carried the form back to the composing
stone.

Four days he worked over the first page of the _Weekly Eagle_. Johnny
expostulated, stormed, pleaded with tears in his eyes.

"Let's let the whole thing slide," he begged. "All we get out of it
anyway is less'n a dollar and think of all the time we're wasting. That
job for Mr. Fowler isn't all done, and Smith's Meat Market is going to
order some bill-heads."

But Bobby was obstinate. Finally Johnny, in disgust, left him to his own
devices.

The world for Bobby contained but one thing. His recollections of that
time are of a flaring gas jet and the smell of printer's ink. He won
finally and duly delivered the eighteen copies--letter-perfect. Probably
five hundred other and imperfect examples of the _Weekly Eagle_ found
their way into the furnace.

Johnny plucked up heart and returned, only to find that the printing
press question was dead as far as Bobby was concerned.

"I'm sick of printing," was all Bobby would say, and no argument as to
unexploited wealth could move him. The subject had not only lost
interest, but mere casual thought of its details brought on a faint
repetition of the mental lethargy. The sight of the press and its varied
appurtenances threw his mind into the defensive blank coma which
rendered him incapable of the simplest intellectual effort. This was
something as outside Bobby's control as the beating of his heart. He did
not understand it, n