The Millerstown Yellow Journal

“HE is for sure not right in his head. I never heard such a dumb thing. I guess if something went wrong with him he would not want it put right aways in the paper.”

Alfie Bittenbender, the Millerstown schoolteacher, looked up at his wife as she perched on the end of his desk. Then he smiled ruefully.

“If Sarah Ann’s pigs die, that is news, if Sarah Ann likes it or not.”

“Just you wait,” Jennie went on, “till he makes many more such dumb mistakes; it won’t anybody take his paper.”

Alfie looked sorrowfully about him. They were in what appeared to have been a small barn, but which was now a printing office. There was a little hand press, shrouded in burlap, a tall case of type, a stove, several piles of paper, and, nailed against the wall, a large box, divided into pigeonholes. The only spot which seemed to be in use was the broad deal table, covered with papers, on some of which Madame Jennie sat enthroned.

As a small boy, Alfie had made up his mind to be an editor. Even when he was in the “small school,” he had begun to gather items.

“Old Man Fackenthal is pretty sick,” he would write on his slate. Or, “Julie Lorish is home with her Pop for a while from working at Zion Church.” His items dealt occasionally with civic improvements. “Al Losch has fixed his crossing. It is us now pleasanter walking.”

Having graduated from the Normal School, he worked for a year in a printing office, then taught the Millerstown school. Both he and Jennie Reichard, whom he married, worked and saved in order to fit out his “printing office,” and talked and dreamed of the Millerstown paper which he meant to publish, and which Jennie proudly named The Star.

The Star, however, had never risen. Just as Alfie was ready to make his project known to his fellow townsmen, a stranger canvassed the town for subscribers and advertisers for the Millerstown Journal, which he proposed to publish on Thursday of each week, at two dollars a year.

“It ain’t his business to come to Millerstown,” Jennie sobbed. “What does he know from Millerstown folks?”

Alfie shook his head.

“He has worked already in New York on a paper. He knows everything. 1 sell my things.”

However, he sold nothing, but covered the press carefully, and rewrapped the bundles of paper. He read the Journal, which Jennie refused to touch. In point of composition, it was doubtless a good paper. Moreover, the news was presented in a manner far from provincial. The items from Zion Church did not appear in a series of disjointed sentences, but were incorporated into a letter, addressed to Elias Bittner, and signed, “Your loving nephew, J. R.” Vain old Elias had no nephew, but was too much flattered to object. Once the editor printed upside down an article to which he wished to call special attention. Millerstown condoled with him for the mistake, and read the article to a man. His pages were dark with scare heads, and exclamation points, and his advertisements were couched in jaunty sentences which Alfie could never have compassed.

“Peter,” one of them read, “ tell John that Butz the barber wants to see him. He needs a shave.” Another, which made Alfie furious, suggested that parents “ask Mr. Bittenbender whether he does n’t think the children need new dictionaries. Weimer has plenty in his store.”

“This is what they call in New York ‘Yellow Journalism,’ ” he said to Jennie. “ I would be ashamed, when I was Millerstown, to make a fuss over such a paper.”

There was no doubt that, for the first few months of its existence, the Journal was popular. Then, suddenly, Millerstown lost its enthusiasm. The editor published the fact that Sarah Ann Mohr, who prided herself on her skill in raising pigs, had lost six by cholera. The day after, several Millerstonians told him in front of the post-office what they thought of him, and Sarah Ann notified him that he need send her the Journal no more. Soon he offended the new Baptists by forgetting the announcement of their services, and then the Mennonites by giving them less space than the Lutherans.

Alfie watched his career eagerly.

“If he makes all the churches mad over him,” he said to Jennie, as she looked down at him from her seat on top of his papers, “then he won’t have anybody to take Ins Journal.”

Jennie slipped down, and started toward the door.

“ Just you wait once till he makes some more such dumb mistakes,” she said cheerfully.

Whereupon Alfie smiled absently back, and went down to the post-office for the day’s mail. When, half an hour later, he hurried home, his eyes were round with excitement.

“I tell you the Journal will now have plenty news,” he announced.

“What is it?” asked Jennie.

“It has been some one murdered in Millerstown.”

“ Some one murdered in Millerstown! ” Jennie clasped her hands, all covered with biscuit dough as they were. She would not have been more surprised if he had said an earthquake or a volcano, “Who is, then, murdered in Millerstown?”

“Ay, it was some fellows living in a shanty on the mountain: Dutch John, what comes always around to trim grapevines, and another, Josie Knapp, what comes always around begging. That fellow, he killed Dutch John. But they have him. Old Man Fackenthal went up the mountain for to fetch some durchwachs ” (thoroughwort), “and he found him dead. Now it will be news.”

“I think it is a shame for Millerstown. I don’t think such a thing should go in the paper.”

“ Ach, but it must ! He will have plenty to fill it.”

Alfie did not dream, however, of the possibilities which the editor would find in the murder. His eyes grew round with horror, not at the details alone, which were really as far from harrowing as the details of a murder could be, but at the way they were exaggerated. The Journal said that Old Man Fackenthal had found the body at “dusky twilight,” which was not true at all. Instead, it was broad afternoon. Nor did he “start with horror, and then go out to draw in deep breaths of pure air before investigating further.” Old Man Fackenthal was not that kind. Nor had the murdered man’s dog stood guard over the body. The murdered man had no dog.

All summer the editor made copy of the murder. He described the quarters assigned to the prisoner, his behavior, his food, his clothing. He wrote incidentally on the jail itself, its cost and design. He published biographies of the murderer and the murdered man, whose validity no one in Millerstown but Alfie seemed to suspect.

The prisoner was tried at the county seat, and sentenced to be hanged in January. The date was set for the first Thursday, and the editor began in December to prepare the minds of his readers for the event. He reviewed the trial, commented upon the demeanor of the condemned man, and gave a list of those whose privilege it would be to attend. He promised to illustrate his account of the hanging with photographs of the jail, the scaffold, and the sheriff.

Millerstown, which read each lurid paragraph more admiringly than the last, did not see the difficulty which here arose. The hanging was set for Thursday at eight o’clock; the Journal was printed on Wednesday, and distributed with the eleven o’clock mail on Thursday. The printing of the paper could not he postponed, because the editor planned to be married in the county seat that afternoon, and then go away for a week.

Nor did the editor seem more troubled than unconscious Millerstown. He went gayly about his business, grinning a little more broadly, perhaps, at the efforts of his assistant to talk English, and once or twice telling him that he was a “dumb Dutchman, like the rest of Millerstown.”

The date of the hanging was remembered afterwards by the “great snow.” When Alfie came home from school the afternoon before, there were only fugitive flakes, but before dark the ground was white. When he looked out at bedtime, he could not see the lights in the village. The snow seemed to shut him in. He fancied that he could hear it rustling softly. At dawn, Jennie called to him to look out. The familiar contours of every day were lost in one great whiteness, and under the brisk wind drifts were rapidly forming. He looked up the pike toward the schoolhouse, and the road seemed even with the fences.

“We will have to-day no school,” he said at the breakfast table. “ We could perhaps get out, but it will be different to get back. I will go down the street, and if it is any one coming, I will tell them they dare go home.”

In his slow progress through the town, he met no one, till he reached the postoffice. There, on the roughly cleared pavement, Jake Fackenthal and Billy Knerr were swinging their arms to keep warm.

“It is a bad day for the hanging,” Billy said, as Alfie joined them.

“Ach, well, it is all indoors,” rejoined Jake. “We can soon read about it in the paper.”

“Will he have it already in the paper?” Alfie asked quickly.

“He said to somebody that he would.”

“ But how will he get it in the paper so quick ? ”

“ I guess by telegraph. He is me a pretty smart fellow.”

“But” — Alfie paused. He would find out for himself down at the station.

As he turned the corner, the wind nearly lifted him from his feet. It cut his face, and chilled him to the bone.

“ It would not be funny when the wires are down,” he said to himself. “And maybe the trains stopped. It is just now time for the hanging. He must have gone a long while ago down to the station. It is here no footprints.”

The wind grew stronger each moment. When he reached the steps of the high platform, he was compelled to cling there for a moment, with the snow stinging his face. The platform had been swept clear by the wind, and he walked quickly across it to the office, where, he knew, the agent, Henny Leibensberger, would have the stove almost bursting with heat. He swung open the office door, then closed it quickly.

“But where is he?” he asked.

“Where is who?” Henny looked up from his desk.

“Ay, the editor. Will he not hear over the telegraph from the hanging?”

“Nobody will hear nothing from the hanging over this telegraph that I know of. Did he say he would?”

“Somebody said it.”

“Well, it ain’t so. Sit down once.”

Alfie tramped up and down the room, too perturbed to accept.

“How will he, then, get the hanging in the paper?” he demanded.

“ I guess he will put off the paper. Say, Alfie,” — Henny sprang to his feet, — “ would you care to stay here and mind the telegraph once a minute, while I go home? It won’t be any trains till I get back.”

Alfie consented willingly. He had learned telegraphy before he went to the Normal School, and he often relieved the agent in summer. He would not go home till eleven o’clock, then he could take the Journal with him. It would certainly not contain much news.

For the first hour, he had little to do. He studied the weather report, he sharpened Henny’s lead pencils, then he fell to trying them one after the other, on the backs of telegraph blanks. Presently, when his scribblings were taking shape in an account of the hanging as he imagined it to be, the telegraph keys clicked with a new sound. He answered the call for Millerstown, and took the message. It read, “Number Seven stalled at Blandon.” Then he fell to writing again, wondering, meanwhile, why Henny did not return. Jennie would be anxious if he did not get home in time for dinner.

The wind seemed to grow each moment stronger and more irresponsible. The track, except for a few feet, was shut off by the thick whirl of snow, on which the sun now gleamed dazzlingly. Down at the end of the platform the drifts were even with the floor.

Presently, the key called again for Millerstown. It was the operator at the county seat, who wished to exchange a few remarks about the storm.

“The wires are down up the valley,” he said. “And there have been no trains for two hours.”

Suddenly Alfie’s eyes brightened, and he leaned down over the table as though afraid of losing one low sound. His own hand moved swiftly, and again he listened. His hand tapped the keys again. Once he smiled grimly, then his face stiffened into its eager lines. Outside, the whirl of snow drove back and forth under the bright sunshine; within, in the smothering heat, his whole being strained itself to listen to the click, click, click, which cut into the silence.

Then the rapid crepitations were no more. Alfie touched the key, he struck it heavily. Its life had departed. It responded only with a dull, mechanical sound, as little like the animation of the moment before as death is like life. For a moment Alfie did not move.

Then — “The wires are down. I must go,” he said impatiently. “Where is Henny that he does not come? But it won’t be any trains; I can go anyhow.”

Seizing his hat and coat, he dashed out across the platform. The wind pounced Upon him as he reached the end, and whirled him off into the deepest part of the great drift. He struggled out, to find himself face to face with the station agent.

“The wires are down,” he gasped. “And it won’t be no eleven o’clock train. And they say” —

“All right,” Henny shouted back. “Much obliged.”

“ But they say ” —

“Yes, I understand. It won’t be any trains. The Journal has everything in it from the hanging.” Henny had turned his back to the wind, and his voice came clear and distinct.

“But they say ” — Alfie’s words were whirled away before the agent realized they had been spoken.

“Good-by,” he shouted; then the door of the office closed upon him. He watched Alfie from the window, wondering whether he had lost his mind. He stood knee-deep in the snow, his open coat flying in the wind.

“How does Henny think he could get the news?” Alfie was saying to himself. “The other folks could think it came by telegraph, but Henny knows it could n’t come by telegraph. Does he think perhaps one could ride, out ? It says, ‘Gelt regiert die Welt, und Dummheit Berks County,’ ” (Gold rules the world, and stupidity Berks County), “ only this time it is Millerstown what ‘ Dummheit rules. ’ Just wait till I tell them! ”

Thereupon, Alfie, with his gloves still in his hand, and with flying coat-tails, started up the street. For a few yards he plunged along, then he stopped again.

“They cannot find it out!" he exclaimed aloud. Then — “But it will mean powerful work!”

A moment later, his broad shoulders darkened the little window at the postoffice. He almost snatched the paper from Dave Wimmer’s hand, then dashed out. A few of the pavements had been cleared, and he made rapid progress. The low gate at his own house was snowed under, and he stepped over it, almost forgetting that it was there. He sped on down the yard, without a glance at the kitchen window, where Jennie usually watched for him, and opened the barn door.

There he gathered an armful of paper and another of wood, and thrust them into the stove, where they soon crackled merrily. Sitting down at his desk, and seizing all the blank paper he could find, he went to work. An hour later he was conscious of some discomfort. At first he could not make out what it was, then he realized that he was hungry. And where was Jennie ?

He ran across the yard to the kitchen. There on the table he found his dinner and a note.

“Pop came over that I should go along to Sally. She is sick. I will come till supper home. ”

He did not sit down, but, taking a pie in one hand, and a plate of doughnuts in the other, went back to the barn. There, for fifteen minutes, he wrote with one hand, while he fed himself with the other. Then, gathering up the loose sheets, he went, across to the type case. The fire had gone out, and the wind had forced itself in through a hundred crannies. When his hands grew so stiff that he could not work, he built up the fire, frowning, meanwhile, at the interruption.

“The ink will not be dry,” he said aloud. “ But I guess it will not make anything out this time. The next time I will fix them up fine. If,” — he added somewhat dubiously, — “if it is any next time.”

No one who had not worked steadily while the light faded could have seen to gather and fold the scattered sheets, which, damp from the press, lay all about the Boor when he had finished. With shaking hands, he packed them into a half-bushel basket, and, putting it on his arm, started down the street. He planned, as he strode along, how he would announce his début as an editor.

“I would rather give them away than sell them,” he thought. “But I guess it is better that I sell them. I wonder if ever before a paper was started with an extra.”

He awoke suddenly to the fact that the storm had entirely ceased. The sky was still a faint, gold, while the great billows of snow gleamed coldly blue in the clear light. Here and there windows were lit up, and he heard men laughing in the tavern. A ball of soft snow caught him behind the ear as he passed Oliver Kuhns’s, and he called back a cheerful, “Just you wait once till I catch you!”

Before he reached the post-office, he heard the sound of many voices. Within, Old Man Fackenthal, Elias Bittner, and Pit Gauroer tilted their chairs against the wall; and on the counters — relics of the days when the post-office had been a store — perched the younger generation, Billy Knerr, the two young Fackenthals, Jakily Kemerer, Jimmie Weygandt, and half a dozen others; and all the boys in the village seemed to have gathered in the space between. Dave Wimmer, the postmaster, who leaned half way out over the gate which divided his quarters from the main office, read aloud from the Millerstown Journal. The reading progressed slowly, for there were frequent interruptions, and demands for elucidation.

“Did n’t he say no word when he was hung ?" old Elias Bittner demanded, as Alfie entered.

“No, not a word,” answered Wimmer solemnly. “It says, ‘silent as the grave what was soon to receive him.’”

“Did n’t they have no praying, or nothing?” some one queried.

“Yes,” answered Dave. “Here is a grand prayer what the chaplain made. It says ” —

“How does the editor know what it says ? ” a slightly scornful voice demanded. They turned to regard Alfie, who stood, with his basket on his arm, just within the door.

“By the telegraph, of course,” old Elias answered impatiently. “How else should he know? Dave, go on with the praying.”

Old Man Fackenthal let his chair slam to the floor.

“ I say so, too. How does he know it?” he said. “This editor was me too much all summer for making something out of nothing. Alfie, what have you there ? ”

Alfie had set down his basket, and was nervously unfolding one of the damp sheets.

“I have here,” — he began, his confidence suddenly deserting him, — “I have here a new paper what will tell about the hanging.”

“A new paper! What for a new paper ?” demanded Elias. “It can’t be any paper but the Journal. It was to-day no train.”

Old Man Fackenthal motioned him to be silent.

“You had better shut a while up, and let Alfie tell from this new paper. Now, Alfie.”

Alfie’s eyes burned brightly.

“It is a new paper, just to-day begun. The name shall be the Millerstown Star. It will tell all the news, and it will be published every week from now on, at a dollar a year. It has this time nothing in it. but from the hanging.”

“We all know about the hanging,” said old Elias impatiently. “We” —

“You do not know about the hanging,” said Alfie firmly. “Perhaps Dave will read us what it says in this paper from the hanging.”

Willing hands passed it across to Dave, from whose grasp the Millerstown Journal had slipped unnoticed to the floor. The room was silent enough now to suit even Old Man Fackenthal. Dave adjusted his spectacles with a loud, “Well, now, we will see what all this means.” His eyes grew wider as he glanced along the head-lines, then his mouth opened, and the paper shook in his hands.

“Boys!” he said faintly.

“Well, hurry yourself,” some one called.

“Boys!” he ejaculated again.

“Well, what!” This time there was a chorus of exclamations. “Ain’t he dead ? ”

“ Yes, but, boys! It says here it was n’t to-day no hanging. He made hisself dead with poison in the jail!”

“Bei meiner Sex, I don’t believe it!” said Elias Bittner. They silenced him in a moment, and there was a loud demand for further explanation. How had Alfie heard ? Who was publishing the new paper? Where had the editor of the Journal got his news ?

“He got it somehow, and it must be true,” insisted Elias.

“ He made it up out of his own head,” said Old Man Fackenthal. “Say, boys, what for fools does he think we are in Millerstown ? Alfie, from now on I take the Star.”

Thus was the first subscriber enrolled.

Fifteen minutes later, Alfie started out in the street, his basket empty, save for one paper which he was taking home to Jennie.

The sunset glow had vanished, and the stars were shining. Out across the Weygandt meadows, the bleeder at the furnace blazed like a beacon. Then another light, less bright, but more alluring, caught his glance. Jennie had come home. As he reached the gate, a long shaft of light from the opening door shot across the snow.

“Well, Alfie, where have you been ? I was getting scared.”

For answer he handed her the little sheet, damp and crumpled, blank on three sides, and sadly blurred on the fourth. It was a newspaper of one item, which began: —

“In spite of the lengthy account of the hanging of Josie Knapp, published by our esteemed contemporary, the Millerstown Journal, we would say that he was not this morning hung, but yesterday evening already took poison in the county jail.”