Newspaper Page Text
6
'THE LIMIT OE THE LINE”
Sy Odessa Strickland Payne and Lamar Strickland Payne
SHIRLEY BRYAN, stenographer for a great
Iron Corporation, is the first action on the scene.
The story begins with a suburban train pulling
out from under the marble corridors of a grand.
Terminal Station.
Barry Moore, Miss Bryan’s employer, plays
the role of “The Man of Iron.” He is trying to
build a collossal fortune.
Gregory Ford, a Harvard athlete, a Princeton
theologue, a multi-millionaire, is deeply interested
in the question, propounded by the Book of Job,
“If a man die, shall he live again?” because a
specialist has told him, his days are numbered.
Henry Brown, editor of the Water Oaks Ga
zette, is a discovery of Ford’s. He is a lover of
poetry, psychology, economy. He is an environ
ment-fighter of the best type.
Gregory Ford and his mother rent one-half
of the old colonial Bryan home, and wealth and
poverty are only across the hall from each other.
Mrs. Ford is a woman, “who has never had a
thrill.” Mrs. Bryan is a breeze of sunshine for
XX.
ITH a feeling akin to tears, Henry
Brown framed the last edition of the
Water Oak Gazette in an old gilt frame.
It had been such a poor little struggling
sheet ;and he had been pouring the
best of himself through its columns for
years. He had aired his point of view
with a fulness and freedom which had
compensated him for the lack of many
- i
things.
The Gazette had been a clean paper, and he had
tried courageously to keep it on the right side of
the line.
Through many lonely nights and long-drawn-out
days the little sheet had furnished him with a me
dium of expression, and it had been his comrade
and his faithful friend. He has seen it, in his imagi
nation, so often, as its messages of hope and good
cheer were spelled out laboriously by the light of
the little red lamp, in 'the homes of the humble.
He had ministered at an altar, where no man held
him to an account, and he was glad to remember
that he had been severely chastely true, to his best
ideals.
And now he was called to a wider sphere of use
fulness; but he wondered, in his heart of hearts, if
the new paper and the big building and the great
presses ruif by steam, would ever be quite as inti
mately dear to him.
He was posed in the new office —quartered oak
desks, cream window shades, and a group of straight
arid easy Spanish leather chairs, certainly made up
a more attractive environment than the old sanc
tum. Two pictures hung suggestively over the glass
colonial mantel, Henry Grady’s and Horace Gree
ly’s. Manson had tied the flag of the union and
the lost cause between them with a gun strap worn
by him in the jungles of the Philippines. In his
way, Manson was an artist. This was Editor
Brown’s and Chauffeur Manson’s way of visibly
symbolizing the new partnership.
The editor-in-chief had on a dark blue suit,
Which was very becoming to him, which he patted
now and then to make sure it was not a pipe dream.
Beneath his coat collar, in the first button hole to
the left, he had inserted a LaFrance rose. It gave
him a feeling of great joy, as one of the sons of
Mary who was troubled with too much money, had
telegraphed its parent bouquet to Miss Ford.
“I wish that I had HER picture,” he said. “She
could be sponsor for the new Gazette; but I might
spend my days gazing at it and that would not add
to the future of the paper.”
He heard steps lumbering up the stairs.
The elevator which Ford had ordered wasn’t
completed, and visitors had still to use the stairway.
The editor in chief swung the old Water Oaks Ga
zette, in position over his desk. He assumed a pose
SYNOPSIS
Shirley’s sake, and she begins to draw young
« Ford’s confidence.
Then there is Little Nell, the child of wis
dom. And, on the horizon looms a girl, a
cousin of the Fords, Ethel, by name, who will
play a dramatic part as the story progresses.
There is a wreck of the Suburban train, of
which Mrs. Bryan has a physic vision. Her daugh
ter, Shirley, who is aboard, escapes unhurt, but
she measures up to her part as a heroine, by her
loving sympathy to those less fortunate.
Shirley Bryan is apparently interested in a
degree in both young men, though she is not
attached to either. She longs ior the higher self
of Barry Moore to triumph, over his love for
money; and she desires that the young millionaire
may live, and disappoint the specialist who has
predicted for him an early demise.
Little Nell is injured by being thrown from the
motor car of the young millionaire. She was
rushed to the hospital, but Mr. Ford is dissatis
fied both with the verdict of the physicians and
the slowness of her improvement.
of serious dignity.
His door was flung open, without the ceremony of
&. knock, and a countryman, wearing brown jeans,
with his wool hat on the back of his head, and
his face flushed with liquor, walked noisily in.
“Mornin’. Air you the editor of the Gazoot?”
“Os the Gazette, the Water Oaks Gazette,” Hen
ry explained, as he whirled his new revolving chair
a little, “the editor in chief. What can I do for
you, sir?”
“Take my name off’n yur list,” the counrtyman
said, with a sparkle of anger in his brown eyes.
“B’gum, you’ve gone and tied up with a Yankee,
a man that runs his new infernal machine over
little children, an’ cripples ’em, with no more con
sarn than I have about poppin’ over a bird. You
don’t get any more of my nickles. See? Catcn
the idee?”
Henry Brown smiled as he ejected his subscrip
tion book from a convenient drawer.
“What name, please?”
“Joseph Clark,” was the laconic answer.
Mr. Brown looked up, after a few moments, with
a warm glow of indignation flooding his face.
“You have had the Water Oaks Gazette sent you,
Mr. Clark, for two years, and you have never paid
one cent for it. If you had tried to get your food,”
with a slight gesture of disgust, “by the same long
credit system, you would have been planted long
ago in a six-by-two box, in some lonely country
graveyard! Men do not understand, and especially
men of your caliber, that a newspaper is a life
power. It inspires and sustains you in the battle
for bread. And because it does, it must be paid
for. Understand? So that those whose blood is
shed for it, whose lives are coined into the thoughts
which make it a great uplifting force, can be prop
erly rewarded for their labors. ’ ’
Henry Brown rose, and walked up and down the
new rug in his wrath, and it was the memory of
the hard and brutal years of his poverty which
lent emphasis to his remarks.
“Whoa!” suggested Joseph Clark. “Whoa!”
You’ll spile that new art square.”
“Pay up.”
“I’m broke.”
“Pay up.”
‘ ‘ Liquor has got my pile. ’ ’
11 Then you told the truth. Take the easiest chair
that you can find. I wish to help you.”
“What?” Joseph Clark collapsed.
“That story you heard about my partner, Greg
ory Ford,” Henry explained quietly, “was false
in every particular. And, besides, you didn’t be
lieve it when you came up here. You just wanted
to blow about the matter in your district, and see if
you couldn’t browbeat me. Your methods are bad.
And if you have one whit of truth left in you,
you’ll acknowledge it,”
• »
The Golden Age for May 6, 1909.
Henry Brown’s sudden intuition in regard to the
facts, and his pre-emptory assertion of them, by
words and manner, were not without effect.
“Well, you.see, Mr. Brown,” the countryman re
sponded, humbly, from the edge of one of the easy
chairs where he w r as stranded, ‘ l l have had a drink
or two this mawnin, and besides, suh, I has kinder a
hard time giftin’ erlong, matin’ buckle and tongue
meet. A wife and nine childern to support ain’t
er easy job.”
The editor looked grave.
“It isn’t best to think of yourself, in that pitying
fashion,” he said. “Why not have family prayer
at your house, and fight the game, earnestly? Why,
man alive! do you wish your boys to gather about
your grave and say, 4 Paw wuz always dead broke’.
I don’t care whether you sign the pledge or not,
if you keep it —and cultivate the habitual virtue of
Temperance. The force of the Spirit will give you
the power, the hardihood of soul which you need.
Don’t thank me for this talk. Don’t say, ‘I know
you are right. ’ But go home, and be a wise father
to your sons. I wish all of them to weep when you
are gone. The whole nine to miss you. If you
try you can leave a big hole in your community,
when you retire from the situation, that will be
hard to fill.”
“Talk about sermons,” said Joseph Clark. “Feel
like I have been to meetin’, shore and certain. He
rubbed his hands together reflectively. “It would
take money,” he replied, pathetically, glancing up
from the painted floor, “to pull me out of the hole.”
“How much?”
“Five hundred would set me straight, Mr. Brown.
An’ I could buy back my mules, I had to sell ’em
last fall, (got bit in the trade too, b’gum) and
start farmin’ right.”
“I can get my partner to lend you $500.00, Mr.
Clark, but you will, have to rip up the face of your
farm, as if you were searching for a gold mine.”
“I don’t want a Yankee to lend me a dollar,
Henry Brown. B’gum, I prefer to die in the furrow.
We work, while they loaf off of our pension money.”
Then Joseph Clark gave a rebel yell from his
chair that shook the building.
“Well, it takes an editor to talk, Mr. Browm,”
the Countryman said at last, as he rose to go, and
held out his hand awkwardly, “but all the same
I intend to do better and I am much obliged to you;
I’ll think about having family prayer, and if I can
stand to look at folks better dressed than Joseph
Clark, I’ll romance around to church, and see what
the parson has got to say. Mornin’.”
“Mornin’,” said Henry Brown, with a boyish
laugh that had not been on his lips in many a
long year.
****** * * *
! Shirley felt the full force of the desolation ap
pointed her, one evening, after Ford had carried
Mrs. Bryan and Little Nell north, in his special
private car. Mrs. Ford and her attractive niece
were in the capital city attending a musicale, and
she presumed that Henry Brown was with them,
though at least three of Miss Ford’s admirers were
in the aforesaid capital city, waiting for an oppor
tunity to see their divinity. Manson was in the
garage, Shirley presumed, since he had orders to
flag the night express. He had turned Mrs. Bryan’s
barn into somewhat of a garage, with an inclined
floor to run his pet down to mother earth. Os late,
Manson had painted the tonneau white, which was
more in keeping with the name of the famous
steamer than any other color. Os course, Shirley
knew that Aunt Dilsey might be called, but still
the fact could scarcely be classified as anything
but a glimpse of abstract comfort, in the psycho
logical processes which the girl experienced, as she
sat lalone before the flare of the hickory logs in the
open fire-place. Every thought vibration was colored
with some charm of the personalities of those with
whom she had so long been associated. Ford, Barry
Moore, Little Nell, and her mother, swept before her,
in a mental vision, that was both tantalizing and fas
cinating. Only $ week previous Barry Moore’s
