hrow the typewriter
after it. Throw the machine? He had not the strength in his pinky to
press the carriage-shift key!

Part of his difficulty was the size of his hands, of course. But most of
his trouble lay deep-seated in his recollection of his parents' fabulous
machine. It would have made a typist of him in a single half-hour
session, or so he thought.

He had yet to learn about the vast gulf that lies between theory and
practice.

It took Jimmy several weeks of aimless fiddling before he realized that
there was no easy short-cut. Then he went back to the _juj juj juj frf
frf frf_ routine and hated it just as much, but went on.

He invented a kind of home-study "hooky" to break the monotony. He would
run off a couple of pages of regular exercise, and then turn back to the
hunt-and-peck system of typing to work on a story. He took a furtive glee
in this; he felt that he was getting away with something. In mid-July,
Jake caught him at it.

"What's going on?" demanded Jake, waving the pages of manuscript copy.

"Typing," said Jimmy.

Jake picked up the typing guidebook and waved it under Jimmy's nose.
"Show me where it says you gotta type anything like, 'Captain Brandon
struggled against his chains when he heard Lady Hamilton scream. The
pirate's evil laugh rang through the ship. "Curse you--"'"

Jake snorted.

"But--" said Jimmy faintly.

"But nothing!" snapped Jake. "Stop the drivel and learn that thing! You
think I let you keep the machine just to play games? We gotta find a way
to make it pay off. Learn it good!"

He stamped out, taking the manuscript with him. From that moment on,
Jimmy's furtive career as an author went on only when Jake was either out
for the evening or entertaining. In any case, he did not bother Jimmy
further, evidently content to wait until Jimmy had "learned it good"
before putting this new accomplishment to use. Nor did Jimmy bother him.
It was a satisfactory arrangement for the time being. Jimmy hid his
"work" under a pile of raw paper and completed it in late August. Then,
with the brash assurance of youth, he packed and mailed his first
finished manuscript to the editor of _Boy's Magazine_.

His typing progressed more satisfactorily than he realized, even though
he was still running off page after page of repetitious exercise,
leavened now and then by a page of idiotic sentences the letters of
which were restricted to the center of the typewriter keyboard. The
practice, e