dollars less the price of about ten drinks. "Look
a-here," continued Handy, "ol' Ab's got 'em all fooled. Don't you say
anything about it; but ol' Ab's goin' to make his mark." And he shook
Hedrick's hand and took him down to the street, and shook it again and
again before prancing grandly down the sidewalk.

For three years Mrs. Handy's boarding-house has been one of the most
exclusive in our town. They say that she pays Mr. Handy for mowing the
lawn and helping about the rough work in the kitchen, and that he sleeps
in the barn and pays her for such meals as he eats. Sometimes a new
boarder makes the mistake of paying the board money to Handy, and he
appears on Main Street ostentatiously jingling his silver and toward
evening has ideas about the railroad situation. On election days and
when there is a primary Handy drives a carriage and gathers up his
cronies in the fifth ward, who, like him, are not so much in evidence as
they were ten years ago.

It was only last week that Hedrick was in our office telling us of
Handy's "wealth beyond the dreams of avarice." He paused when he had
finished the story, cocked his head on one side, and squinted at the
ceiling as he said:

"For three long, weary, fruitless years I've searched the drug-stores of
this town for the brand of liquor Ab had that day. I believe if I had
two drinks of that I could write better poetry than old Browning
himself."

Whereupon Hedrick shook himself out of the office in a gentle wheesy
laugh.

XVII

The Tremolo Stop

Our business has changed greatly since Horace Greeley's day. And,
although machines have come into little offices like ours, the greatest
changes have come in the men who do the work in these offices. In the
old days--the days before the great war and after it--printers and
editors were rarely leading citizens in the community. The editor and
the printer were just coming out of the wandering minstrel stage of
social development, and the journeyman who went from town to town
seeking work, and increasing his skill, was an important factor in the
craft. One might always depend upon a tramp printer's coming in when
there was a rush of work in the office, and also figure on one of the
tourists in the office leaving when he was needed most.

From the ranks of this wayward class came the old editors and reporters;
they were postgraduates from the back room of newspaper offices and
they brought to the front room their easy vie