Page:Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son.djvu/146

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A SELF-MADE MERCHANT'S

his eye when he read this to me, and gulped a little as he said: "I can't help it; he was such a d——d thoughtful boy. Why, he even remembered to inclose descriptions for the pictures!"

Simpkins' last story covered the whole of the front page and three columns of the second, and it just naturally sold cords of papers. His editor demanded that the State Department take it up, though the Spaniards denied the execution or any previous knowledge of any such person as this Señor Simpkins. That made another page in the paper, of course, and then they got up a memorial service, which was good for three columns. One of those fellows that you can find in every office, who goes around and makes the boys give up their lunch money to buy flowers for the deceased aunt of the cellar boss' wife, managed to collect twenty dollars among our clerks, and they sent a floral notebook, with "Gone to Press," done

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