pers. In school season he seemed
to go to school, and in summer it is certain that he put a box on a high
stool in the back room, and learned the printer's case, and fed the job
presses at odd times, and edged on to the pay-roll without ever having
been formally hired. In the same surreptitious manner he slipped a cot
into the stockroom upstairs and slept there, and finally had it fitted
up as a bedroom, and so became an office fixture.

By the time his voice had stopped squeaking he was a good printer, and
what with using the front office for a study at night, and the New York
papers and the magazines for textbooks, he had acquired a good working
education. Whereupon he fell in love with two divinities at once--the
blonde one working in the Racket Store, on Main Street, and the other, a
new linotype that we installed the year before McKinley's first
election. His heart was sadly torn between them. He never went to bed
under midnight after calling on either of them, and, having the Celt's
natural aptitude to get at the soul of either women or intricate
mechanism, in a year he was engaged to both; but naturally enough a
brain fever overtook him, and he lay on a cot at the Sisters' Hospital
and jabbered strange things.

Among other things the priest who sat beside him one day heard Latin
verse; whereat the father addressed David in the language of the Church
and received reply in kind. And they talked solemnly about matters
theological for five minutes, David's voice changing to the drone of the
liturgist's and his face flushing with uncaged joy. In an hour there
were three priests with the boy, and he spoke in Latin to them without
faltering. He discussed abstruse ecclesiastical questions and claimed
incidentally to be an Italian priest dead a score of years, and, to
prove his claim, described Rome and the Vatican as it was before Leo's
day. Then he fell asleep and the next day was better and knew no Latin,
but insisted on reading the note under his pillow which his girl had
sent him. After that he wanted to know how New York stood in the
National League and how Hans Wagner's batting record was, and proceeded
to get well in short order.

David resumed his place in the office, and when we put in the perfecting
press he added another string to his bow. The press and the linotype and
his girl were his life's passions, and his position as short-stop in the
Maroons, and as snare-drummer in the Second Regiment band, were his