--before anyone knew whence he came or whither he
was bound. He had a little "false motion," the foreman said, and
clattered his types too audibly in the steel stick, but as he got up a
good string of type at the end of the day and furnished his own chewing
tobacco, he created no unfavourable comment in the office. He was a bald
little man, with a fringe of hair above the greasy velvet collar of his
coat, with beady, dancing black eyes, and black chin whiskers and a
moustache that often needed dyeing. It was the opinion of the foreman
and the printers that Mehronay's weakness was liquor, though that
opinion did not arise from anything that he said. For during the first
two weeks we did not hear him say much, but in the years that followed,
his mild little voice that ever seemed to be teetering on the edge of
the laugh into which he fell a score of times during an hour, became a
familiar sound about the office, and the soft, flabby little hand which
the other printers laughed about, during the first week of his
employment with us, has rested on most of the shoulders in the shop
guiding us through many sad ways.

In those days there were only three of us in the front room. All the
bookkeeping and collecting and reporting and editorial writing were done
by the three, and it happened that one morning near the first of the
month, when the books needed attention, no one had heard the performance
of "Hamlet" given by Thomas Keene at the opera house the night before,
and no one about the paper could write it up. Wherefore there was
perturbation; but in an hour this came from the back room set up in type
and proved in the galley:

"There were more clean shaves in town last night than have been seen
here for a long time. Everyone who wears cuffs and a necktie got a
'twice-over' and was 'out amongst 'em.' In the gallery of the opera
house roosted the college faculty and the Potter boy who holds the
Cottonwood Valley belt as the champion lay-down collar swell, and near
him was Everett Fowler, who was making his first public appearance in
his new parted spring whiskers, and was the observed of all observers.
Colonel Alphabetical Morrison, with his famous U-shaped hair-cut, lent
the grace of his presence to the dress circle. The first Methodist
Church was represented by Brother-in-law John Markley, who is wearing a
new flowered necktie, sent by his daughter in California (if you must
know), and General Durham of the _Statesman_ says