Emily Grant Hutchings

“ On these three evenings we had left the board with cramped fingers, and a general sense of dissatisfaction. Several sentences that were plainly spurious were afterward stricken from the record ; but we had forgotten about the other scribes who wanted "a pencil on earth," until Mark interrupted the story to say:
"I must ask you to be wary and sharp to dismiss impostors. Right now there are more than twenty hands trying to control your dictation. It is very hard for me. I am disconsolate, and powerless to help myself. If we do not watch every avenue, our work is spoiled. ”

“ He hurried out by way of the alley. Flossy ran after him. "You forgot your hat, Jap," she cried breathlessly. He took the hat and started off silently.
"Wait a minute, Jap." Her voice was insistent. "You didn't put on a grave face with Ellis, did you? Oh, Jap"—the cry was from her heart—"he will never live to see the new office! He will never know of the realization of his dreams, the big town, the trains whirling through, and he looking down from his lofty window with a smile of superior joy. Oh, Jap, how often have we heard him tell about it! He doesn't know. He is full of hope. ”

“ Between the half-crazed father and the exhausted wife, Jap was taxed to the uttermost. Isabel, for once helpless, lay white and silent in the compartment, too weak to do more than cling to her one tower of strength, while Tom Granger rent Jap's sympathetic heart with his unreasoning grief. At length nature demanded her own; from sheer exhaustion they slept. Jap left them alone and stood out on the platform between the coaches.
"Is my life always to hold grief?" he queried of his soul. A throb of fear tore at his consciousness. Isabel's death-white face arose before him. ”

“ We were jubilant when Rosy Raymond was eliminated from the game, for we feared, whenever we permitted ourselves to speculate, that Bill would marry her, and regret the step. We assumed that the son of the much-married Judge Bowers had inherited a nature sufficiently mobile to recover from the shock of the silly girl's perfidy.
While this unexpected development of the story was being revealed to us, William Marion Reedy sent me, in the envelope with the first ten chapters of "Jap Herron," a criticism that fairly made me tingle with delight. ”

“ Bill sprang to his side and carried him to a seat. Isabel, half distracted, started from her place at the organ. As she passed, the white face in the coffin met her eyes. She stopped. A tide of feeling swept her back, back from Jap, whose limp form called her. The song that Flossy had loved came singing to her lips. Inspired in that moment, she stood beside the coffin and sang, as never before, the words that had comforted Flossy in her years of loneliness:
"Somewhere the stars are shining,
Somewhere the song birds dwell.
Cease then thy sad repining!
God lives, and all is well." ”

“ Instead we got the words :
"When a board is sprung, it lets in rain. It is Emily who has to hold the drip pan for the temperamental ones."
"Thank you for those few kind words, Mark," I said. "But if you think enough of me to trust me with this important work, why do you single me out for all the scoldings, when Edwin and Lola sometimes deserve at least a share in your displeasure?"
"Whist, Hannibal girl, we know our office force," was the humorous rejoinder. ”

“ Flossy had clung to life until he had found the woman who could take her place. Then, all at once, she let go. And now Alice Granger, an invalid for twenty-three years, had relaxed her feeble hold on life when she knew that her child was in safe and gentle hands. Must Death forever draw its grim fingers between him and his happiness? He looked at his bride, fragile as a spring flower, and a great fear rushed over him. Dumb, he stood there, stroking Isabel's hair with futile caresses. ”

“ I did not intend to start another story so soon, but other influences are so strong that they may try to dominate the board. This will not tire you so much. You must be determined not to permit intruders. If they are recognized, you will not be free of them again. I am pushed aside. Leave the board when they appear. Good-bye."
The use of the name, Happy Hollow, forms a link with Hannibal; but if any of the characters in "Jap Herron" were drawn from life, they must have belonged to Mark Twain s generation and not to mine. ”

“ When I went to the new home, they mercifully killed Agnesia. I have been Mabelle Hastings so long that I had almost forgotten Aggie Herron. I gave that hideous name to your friend," she flung a gold-flashed smile at Bill, "because you had no sister Mabelle in the old days. Our folks made a bad selection of names for their progeny. And why Jasper? Why didn't they put the James first? It sounds so much more human."
"Not a bit of it!" declared Bill. "What is there about James? This town had to have its Jap Herron. No substitute would have made good." ”

“ Perhaps Flossy sensed the fact that these evenings were bone and sinew to Jap's manhood. The boy, never careless, was changing to a man of purpose, such as would be the product of Ellis Hinton's training. The stray, born of the union of purposeless, useless Jacky Herron, and Mary, peevish and fretful, changeable and inconstant, had been born again into the likeness of the man who bad been almost a demigod to him. ”

“ But Bill and Mabelle were not doomed to see their enthusiasm go up in vapor. It bore, instead, the most substantial fruit. The barren, treeless town was beginning to grow shade for the aldermen to rest under in their old age.
Kelly Jones said that if Jap had brought Mabelle with him, instead of waiting fourteen years to import her, the town would be larger than St. Louis. As it was, Bloomtown might yet run that city a swift race. Mabelle set the fashions; told the School Board how to run the schools; the preachers how to make their churches popular; the mothers how to train their children. ”

“ Bill and Jap went hunting once a week, so the larder grew beyond sardines. Jap acquired a hatred of turnips and pumpkins that was in after years almost a mania. At Christmas, Kelly Jones brought in a barrel of sorghum, "to sweeten 'em," he guffawed. Jap had grown to manhood before he wholly forgave that pleasantry. It was a hard winter. Everybody said so, and when Jap gazed at Ellis across the turnips and sorghum of those weary months, he said he believed it.
"Shame on you," rebuked Ellis, gulping his turnips with haste. "Think of the wretched people who would be glad to get this food." ”

“ She laughed, her old merry laugh, when Jap told her of Rosy Raymond's achievement. Mabelle tossed her yellow curls.
"Well, I don't think she was worrying Bill," she snapped.
"There is no heavier blow to romance than twins," Jap said.
"Maybe she will call them Jap and Bill," crisped Mabelle, and stopped short when her brother walked abruptly to the other end of the porch.
"I hope that it won't fluster you to know that Bill and I are going to be married before Fanny Maud leaves for Europe," she flung at him. "I want that haughty sister of mine to know that I am marrying a real man." ”

“ He slapped his thigh, and a great, joyous laugh set his shoulders to heaving. "Bill, you're a genius for spying out mysteries. How did you get on to it?"
"Mysteries!" shouted Bill. "Why, everybody in Bloomtown, including Isabel, knows that Jap is fairly sapheaded about her."
"Well, what's hampering him?" inquired Tom. "Why don't he confide in me?"
"Confide your hat!" remarked Bill crisply. "Isabel will die of old age before Jap asks her. You see, he is such a durn fool that he thinks he isn't good enough for her. When the Lord made Jap Herron He made a man, I tell you!" ”

“ I don't want to rile you, Bill, but I rather think there are two sides to this story, and I want to hear both sides. If it is proven that Jones has mistreated Rosy brutally, I will hold him while you give him the licking he deserves. More than that, I will help Rosy to get a divorce. Isn't that fair enough, Bill? What is revenge upon a dead body, especially if you expiate that revenge on the gallows? Tell me, who profits? For the woman, disgrace. For you—— Humph! the only one who comes out of it honorably is the dead man, Jones. ”

“ She is his wife, Bill, and all your heroics won't gloss that fact from sight. Do you want to hang, because you were a damned fool? I can consider a romantic close to your career, but not as an intruder in another man's home—no matter how great your feeling of injustice. Rosy was not a child when she married Wilfred Jones."
"But he struck her," gulped Bill.
"I have known times," declared Jap vehemently, "when, if I had been of the fibre of Wilfred Jones, I would have felt satisfaction in thrashing Rosy Raymond. ”

“ What a wonderful thing is a baby! Babies were not new to either Bill or Jap. In Bill's memory lingered the shrill duet of his twin half-sisters, a continuous performance that had lasted more than a year. And Jap had never fully corrected a lurch to the left side, due to carrying his sister, Agnesia, when he was little more than a baby himself. ”

“ But for the intervention of Tom Granger, who had followed the Mayor because he scented trouble, there would have been a quick finish to the pompous career of Bill Bowers's progenitor, for Bill had wrested the pistol from his father's hand and was pressing it against the temple of the worst scared coward Bloomtown had ever seen. There was a sharp tussle between the broad-shouldered banker and the frenzied youth. Several men rushed in from the street.
"Let me go!" shouted Bill, "for if he's killed Jap he's got to die." ”