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The Adventures of Bobby Orde, a novel by Stewart Edward White |
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Chapter 20. The Partners |
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_ CHAPTER XX. THE PARTNERS The thousand envelopes were printed and delivered. Mr. English expressed himself as entirely satisfied, and allowed the new firm to experiment on bill heads. Mr. Orde promised an order of more envelopes when these were finished. Johnny's commercial instincts were thoroughly aroused. He saw visions of wealth beyond the dreams of wood-box-filling or street-sprinkling with the garden hose in summer. In that community even Johnny English had to earn his own pocket money. Bobby, too, entered into the game with enthusiasm--for over a week. Then he grew tired of the mechanical repetition of that which he had acquired so painfully. It no longer interested him to set the type, to lock the form, to ink and clean the ink plates. He had carried these things to their last refinement of skill. As for the actual printing--the endless insetting of paper, pulling down on the lever, removing the paper--this he could no longer stand for more than half an hour at a time. Then a deep lethargy seized his every faculty. His mind sank to stupor. Time no longer possessed dimensions, but blew into a vast Present which was never going to cease. If he kept at it a half-hour after this condition manifested itself he emerged from the ordeal as tired and sleepy as though he had undergone hard physical labour. It was more than mere boredom; it was a revolt of the soul. At first his loyalty to the firm and his sense of duty drove him on. Then gradually he relinquished the printing to Johnny. That young man could cheerfully have stuck to the press twelve hours a day, if he had been permitted. Each printed bit of paper laid aside on the growing pile to his left represented just that much more pocket money. So, strangely enough, the relative position of the two boys toward the work in hand was reversed. At first, when the mechanical difficulties seemed insurmountable, Bobby's perseverance had been inexhaustible, while Johnny was a dozen times inclined to let the whole problem go smash. Now, when the task of feeding into the press the thousand necessary to fill orders seemed endless, Johnny's patience rose more than adequate to the occasion, while Bobby's spirit shrank at the mere size of it. Finally matters adjusted themselves so that Bobby saw to the alignment, the perfection of the impression, all the rest of getting ready; then Johnny took hold. But one day Bobby, walking glumly over to the composing stone, suggested something new. "Let's start a newspaper," said he. The clang of the press came to an abrupt stop. "Let's start a newspaper," he repeated. "We've got enough pica to print one page at a time." Rashly Johnny agreed. All went well until it came time to print the sheet. Eighteen subscribers were secured at five cents a copy. Johnny and Bobby wrote the entire number between them. Bobby set it up, happily. Johnny, also happily, turned out certain letter-heads at the press. Then came time to print. And at that moment trouble began. The first copy was legible but smudgy. Bobby was not satisfied and attempted improvement, most of which, so far from improving, gave cause for fresh defects. Johnny was standing about impatiently. "Come on," said he at last, "that's good enough. They can read it, all right, and those few letters don't matter. Let it go at that." But Bobby shook his head and carried the form back to the composing stone. Four days he worked over the first page of the _Weekly Eagle_. Johnny expostulated, stormed, pleaded with tears in his eyes. "Let's let the whole thing slide," he begged. "All we get out of it anyway is less'n a dollar and think of all the time we're wasting. That job for Mr. Fowler isn't all done, and Smith's Meat Market is going to order some bill-heads." But Bobby was obstinate. Finally Johnny, in disgust, left him to his own devices. The world for Bobby contained but one thing. His recollections of that time are of a flaring gas jet and the smell of printer's ink. He won finally and duly delivered the eighteen copies--letter-perfect. Probably five hundred other and imperfect examples of the _Weekly Eagle_ found their way into the furnace. Johnny plucked up heart and returned, only to find that the printing press question was dead as far as Bobby was concerned. "I'm sick of printing," was all Bobby would say, and no argument as to unexploited wealth could move him. The subject had not only lost interest, but mere casual thought of its details brought on a faint repetition of the mental lethargy. The sight of the press and its varied appurtenances threw his mind into the defensive blank coma which rendered him incapable of the simplest intellectual effort. This was something as outside Bobby's control as the beating of his heart. He did not understand it, nor attempt to analyze it. "I'm sick of it," said he; just as after the labour of building a fort in Monrovia, he had with the same remark deserted his companions on the threshold of its enjoyment. Bobby thought he exercised a choice when he turned from printing, just as he chose whether to walk on the right or on the left side of the street. In reality it would have been impossible for him to re-enter his interest, his enthusiasm; impossible even for him to have accomplished the mechanical labour of the trade save at an utterly disproportionate expense of nervous energy. Bobby did not know this; of course, Johnny was not capable of such analysis. The only human being who might have understood and worked in correction of the tendency, read the affair amiss. Mrs. Orde was only too glad to get Bobby into the open air again, and saw in his abandonment of this feverish enthusiasm only cause for rejoicing. So Bobby threw his friend into despair by declining to go on with a flourishing business. "Bime by," said he. "I'm sick of it, now." As a matter of fact he never touched the printing press again. His parents deplored the useless waste of a large amount of money and drew the usual conclusion that it is foolish to buy children expensive things. No doubt from that standpoint the affair was deplorable; yet there is this to be noted, that Bobby's enthusiasm blew out only after he had thought all around the subject, back front, bottom and sides. He knew that printing press theoretically and practically and all it could do. As long as it withheld the smallest secret Bobby clung to it, his soul at white heat. But the repetition and again the repetition of what he had learned thoroughly struck cold his every higher faculty. He shrugged it all from him, and turned with unabated freshness his inquiring child's eyes to what new the world had to offer him. _ |
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