In Our Town

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White William Allen. In Our Town

I. Scribes and Pharisees

II. The Young Prince

III. The Society Editor

IV "As a Breath into the Wind"

V. The Coming of the Leisure Class

VI. The Bolton Girl's "Position"

VII "By the Rod of His Wrath"

VIII "A Bundle of Myrrh"

IX. Our Loathed but Esteemed Contemporary

X. A Question of Climate

XI. The Casting Out of Jimmy Myers

XII "'A Babbled of Green Fields"

XIII. A Pilgrim in the Wilderness

XIV. The Passing of Priscilla Winthrop

XV "And Yet a Fool"

XVI. A Kansas "Childe Roland"

XVII. The Tremolo Stop

XVIII. Sown in Our Weakness

XIX "Thirty"

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We have had many reporters for our little country newspaper—some good ones, who have gone up to the city and have become good newspaper men; some bad ones, who have gone back to the livery-stables from which they sprang; and some indifferent ones, who have drifted into the insurance business and have become silent partners in student boarding-houses, taking home the meat for dinner and eating finically at the second table of life, with a first table discrimination. But of all the boys who have sat at the old walnut desk by the window, the Young Prince gave us the most joy. Before he came on the paper he was bell-boy at the National Hotel—bell-hop, he called himself—and he first attracted our attention by handing in personal items written in a fat, florid hand. He seemed to have second sight. He knew more news than anyone else in town—who had gone away, who was entertaining company, who was getting married, and who was sick or dying.

The day the Young Prince went to work he put on his royal garment—a ten-dollar ready-made costume that cost him two weeks' hard work. But it was worth the effort. His freckled face and his tawny shock of red hair rose above the gorgeous plaid of the clothes like a prairie sunset, and as he pranced off down the street he was clearly proud of his job. This pride never left him. He knew all the switchmen in the railroad yards, all the girls in the dry-goods stores, all the boys on the grocers' waggons, all the hack-drivers and all the barbers in town.

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The next week the "Maine" was blown up, and in the excitement the troubles of David were forgotten in the office. Moreover, as he had to work overtime he put his soul deeper into the machine, and his nerves took on something of the steel in which he lived. The Associated Press report was long in those days, and the paper was filled with local news of wars and rumours of wars, so that when the call for troops came in the early spring, the town was eager for it, and David could not wait for the local company to form, but went to Lawrence and enlisted with the Twentieth Kansas. He was our first war-hero for thirty years, and the town was proud of him. Most of the town knew why he went, and there was reproach for the blonde in the Racket Store, who had told the girls it would be in June and that they were going East for a wedding trip.

When David came back from Lawrence an enlisted man, with a week in which to prepare for the fray, the Imperial Club gave him a farewell dance of great pride, in that one end of Imperial Hall was decorated for the occasion with all the Turkish rugs, and palms, and ferns, and piano-lamps with red shades, and American flags draped from the electric fixtures, and all the cut-glass and hand-painted punch-bowls that the girls of the T. T. T. Club could beg or borrow; and red lemonade and raspberry sherbet flowed like water. Whereat David Lewis was so pleased that he grew tearful when he came into the hall and saw the splendour that had been made for him. But his soul, despite his gratitude to the boys and girls who gave the party, was filled with an unutterable sadness; and he sat out many dances under the red lamp-shades with the various girls who had been playing sister to him; and the boys to whom the girls were more than sisters were not jealous.

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