s Larrabee in tears, and the foreman
leaning over the counter laughing so that he couldn't speak. It wasn't
Jimmy's fault. The foreman had done it--by the mere transposition of a
little brass rule separating the society news from Jimmy's story with
the Kipling verse at the head of it. The rule tacked the Kipling verse
onto Miss Larrabee's article announcing the engagement. Here is the way
it read:

"This marriage, which will take place at St. Andrew's Church, will unite
two of the most popular people in town and two of the best-known
families in the State.

"_And this is the sorrowful story
Told as the twilight fails,
While the monkeys are walking together,
Holding each other's tails!_"

Now, Jimmy was no more to blame than Miss Larrabee, and many people
thought, and think to this day, that Miss Larrabee did it--and did it on
purpose. But for all that it cast clouds over the moon of Jimmy's
countenance, and it was nearly a year before he regained his merry
heart. He was nervous, and whenever he saw a man coming toward the
office with a paper in his hand Jimmy would dash out of the room to
avoid the meeting. For an hour after the paper was out the ringing of
the telephone bell would make him start. He didn't know what was going
to happen next.

But as the months rolled by he became calm, and when Governor Antrobus
died, Jimmy got up a remarkably good story of his life and achievements,
and though there was no family left to the dear old man to buy extra
copies, all the old settlers--who are the hardest people in the world
to please--bought extra copies for their scrapbooks. We were proud of
Jimmy, and assigned him to write up the funeral. That was to be a "day
of triumph in Capua." There being no relatives to interfere, the lodges
of the town--and the Governor was known as a "jiner"--had vied with one
another to make the funeral the greatest rooster-feather show ever given
in the State. The whole town turned out, and the foreman of our office,
and everyone in the back room who could be spared, was at the Governor's
funeral, wearing a plume, a tin sword, a red leather belt, or a sash of
some kind. We put a tramp printer on to make up the paper, and told
Jimmy to call by the undertaker's for a paid local which the undertaker
had written for the paper that day.

Jimmy's face was beaming as he snuggled up to his desk at three o'clock
that afternoon. He said he had a great story--names of the pall-b