n
was living in Mehronay's world, seeing the people and events about them
through his merry countenance. No one ever referred to him as Mr.
Mehronay, and before he had been on the street six months he was calling
people by their first names, or by nicknames, which he tagged onto them.
He was so fatherly to the young people that the girls in the Bee Hive,
or the White Front, or the Racket Store used to brush his clothes when
they needed it, if we in the office neglected him, and smooth his back
hair with their pocket combs, and he--never remembering the name of the
particular ministering angel who fixed him up--called one and all of
them "darter," smiled a grateful smile like an old dog that is petted,
and then went his way. The girls in the White Front Drygoods Store gave
him a cravat, and though it was made up, he brought it every morning in
his pocket for them to pin on. He was as simple as a child, and, like a
child, lived in a world of unrealities. He swore like a mule driver, and
yet he told the men in the back room that he could never go to sleep
without getting down and saying his prayers, and the only men with whom
he ever quarrelled were a teacher of zoology at the College, who is an
evolutionist, and Dan Gregg, the town infidel.

One morning when we were sitting in the office before going out to the
street for the morning's grist, Mehronay dog-eared a fat piece of copy
and jabbed it on the hook as he started for the door.

"My boy was drunk last night," he said. "Me and his mother felt so bad
over it that I gave him a pretty straight talk this morning. There it
is."

The office dropped its jaw and bugged its eyes.

"Oh, yes," he continued. "Didn't you know I had a boy? He's been the
best kind of a boy till here lately. I can see his mother don't like it
and his sister's worried too." His face for a second wore an expression
of infinite sadness, and he sighed even while the smile came back on the
face he turned to us from the door as he said: "Sometimes I think he is
studying law with old Charley Hedrick and sometimes I think he is in the
bank with John Markley; but he is always with me, and was such a decent
boy when I had him out to the College. But I saw him with Joe Nevison
last night, and I knew he'd been drinking."

With that he closed the door behind him and was gone. This was the
article that Mehronay left on the hook:

"Your pa was downtown this morning, complaining about his 'old trouble,'
that