Paul and the Printing Press Part 11

"Two heads are often better than one," responded Mr. Cameron kindly.

"Bring your problem home, my boy, if you find it too big for you.

Together we'll thrash it out."

"You certainly are a trump, Dad!" cried Paul. "I guess between us all we can make a go of the _March Hare_."

"I'm sure of it!" responded his father.

CHAPTER VI

A GAME OF CARDS

The first copy of the _March Hare_ came out amid great excitement,--excitement that spread not only through the Burmingham High School but into the home of almost every child in the town. It was a good number, exceptionally so, even as the product of an undergraduate body of students who were most of them amateurs at the writing game.

A page of the magazine was given up to each of the cla.s.ses and contained items of interest to freshmen, soph.o.m.ores, juniors, and seniors respectively; there was a page of alumnae notes; another page devoted to general school news; a section on school sports; another section on girls' clubs and handicraft. The drawing master contributed a page or two on poster-making; and Mrs. Clement was prevailed upon to write a bright and practical article on the making of an iceless refrigerator.

Even Mr. Carter, old newspaper warhorse that he was, was compelled to admit that the _March Hare_ was not half so mad as it was painted. In fact, he grudgingly owned to one of his employees that the new publication was quite a masterpiece for the youngsters. He had not dreamed they could do so well. It was a great surprise to him. Why, the product was quite an eye opener! A paper for general home use might not be such a bad thing in Burmingham. There was actually something in this _March Hare_ worth while for grown-ups. If the following issues continued to be of the present order of merit, the _Echo_ had nothing to blush for in fostering the scheme. As for that Paul Cameron, he was a boy worth watching. He would make his mark some day.

Coming from a man who habitually said so little, such praise was phenomenal and it spurred Paul, to whom it was repeated, to increased effort. He must keep his paper up to this standard, that was certain.

With such a varied group of opinions to harmonize as was represented by his editorial staff, this was not altogether an easy task. Each boy stressed the thing he was specially interested in and saw no reason for publis.h.i.+ng anything else in the paper. Some thought more room should be given to athletics; some clamored that the "highbrow stuff" be cut out; others were for choking off the girls' articles on canning and fancy work. There were hectic meetings at which the youthful literary pioneers squabbled, and debated, and almost came to blows.

But Paul Cameron was a boy of unusual tact. He heard each objector in turn and patiently smoothed away his objections until, upon a battlefield of argument from which scars of bitterness might have survived, a harmonious body of workers finally stood shoulder to shoulder, each with enthusiasm to make the particular part of the work for which he was responsible finer and more efficient. It was, as Paul declared to his colleagues, a triumph of teamwork.

It had never, perhaps, come to the minds of the boys that teamwork was a term that could be applied to work as well as to play. Business and sport seemed vitally different fields of activity. Yet here they were--a group of boys pulling together, each at the post a.s.signed him--toiling for the success of the whole body. Was it such a different thing from football or baseball after all? Business managers, authors, advertising agents, were working quite as hard to do their part as ever they had worked at right or left tackle; as first baseman, or pitcher, or catcher. The present task simply demanded a different type of energy, that was all. The same old slogan of each for the whole was applicable.

Consequently every man took up his duties with a pride in his especial role on the team, and as a result the second issue of the _March Hare_ over-topped the first, and the third the second.

Young people who did not go to the High School at all mailed subscriptions to the business manager; the alumnae, now scattered in every direction, began to write for the publication to be sent them; it was good, they said, to get once more into touch with their Alma Mater.

Older persons who had no children turned in applications for the _March Hare_. They had seen a copy of the paper and liked it.

Into Paul's editorial sanctum articles from parents who had things to say and wished to say them gradually found their way. Many of these persons had done little writing and would not have presumed to send their attempts to a magazine of a more professional character.

Mr. Lemuel Hardy, for example, submitted a humorous poem on how the grapes disappeared from his stone wall,--a poem so amusing and so good-natured yet withal containing such a pitiful little refrain of disappointment that the seniors at once took it upon themselves to see that no more of Lemuel's grapes were molested.

Mrs. Wilbur wrote on raising, transplanting, and caring for currant bushes. Was it really so hard as that to bring a good crop of fruit to perfection? If so, the boy was a brute who invaded Mrs. Wilbur's garden.

1920 would see that there was no more of that!

Gladys Marvin's father sent to the paper a short article on the beauty of the ordinary stones when polished and offered to polish, for a small sum, any specimen brought him. Many of the pupils of the school availed themselves of this suggestion, and before a month was out there blossomed forth a host of stones of every imaginable hue set in rings or scarfpins of silver. Stone-hunting became a craze and the geological department gained scores of pupils in consequence. One heard murmurs about quartz and crystals as one pa.s.sed through the school corridors, and one came upon eager scientists comparing rings, brooches, or pendants.

The drawing department was beset with pupils who wished either to make designs for jewelry, or to look over books on ancient settings for gems.

Louise Clausen had a necklace she had made herself at arts and crafts cla.s.s; it was set with stones she had collected--common pebbles that had been polished--and it was the envy of the entire student body. Her mother had let her melt up an old silver b.u.t.ter-dish to make it, she explained.

Burmingham boys and girls went home _en ma.s.se_ and begged to be allowed to melt up old water pitchers, mugs, or napkin rings, and fas.h.i.+on jewelry.

Out of the jumble of material turned in from various sources one number after another of the _March Hare_ appeared, each marked by a freshness of subject matter and a freedom of expression in such complete contrast to other publications that even such an august medium as the _Echo_ broke over its traditions to a sufficient extent to glean an idea here and there from the infant prodigy and enlarge upon it.

Once no less a personage than Mr. Arthur Presby Carter himself asked of Paul permission to reprint in the columns of his paper an article that had particularly appealed to him as unique and interesting.

"I tried," declared Paul, when relating the incident to his father, "not to fall all over myself when granting the permission. I told him that of course the thing was copyrighted, but that we should be glad to have him use it on the condition that he printed the source from which he had obtained it. One of his men told me afterward that we let him off too easy--that Carter was determined to have the article, and would have paid us a good sum for the privilege of republis.h.i.+ng it. We never thought of charging him for it; we were proud as Punch to have him reprint it."

Mr. Cameron laughed. Paul's frankness had always been one of the lad's greatest charms.

"Pride goeth before destruction, my son," he remarked jestingly.

"However, perhaps you did as well not to put a price on your product.

Mr. Carter has done quite a little to boost your undertaking and you can afford to grant him a favor or two. But I will say you are getting pretty deep into newspaper work, Paul."

"I do seem to be, don't I?" smiled Paul, flus.h.i.+ng boyishly. "I'm crazy over it, too. The more you do at it the better you like it. I don't know but that when I'm through college, I'd like to go in and be a reporter.

I'd like to write up fires and accidents and wear a little badge that would admit me inside the lines at parades and political meetings."

"I'm afraid you'd find there was lots to it besides the badge and the pleasure of stalking under the ropes."

"I suppose so; but I'd like the chance to try it. I've always envied those chaps who whispered some magic word and walked in while the rest of us waited outside."

"There you go!" cried his father. "You are just as bad at wanting what other people cannot have as ever were the early book collectors!"

Paul colored.

"I know it," he admitted. "I'm afraid we all enjoy having a pull and getting the best of other people. It is human nature."

"It is human, that is true; nevertheless, the impulse is a very selfish one," said his father.

A silence fell upon the two. They were sitting in the living room and it was almost Paul's bedtime. Outside the rain was beating on the windows; but inside a fire crackled on the hearth and a crimson glow from the silken lampshade made cheery the room.

"I was telling the fellows to-day some of the things you told me about early bookmaking, Dad," remarked Paul. "They wanted to know if printing came soon after the illuminated books, and who invented it. I couldn't answer their question and as yet have had no time to look up the matter.

We had quite a discussion about it. Perhaps you can save me the trouble of overhauling an encyclopedia."

"I've no business to save you from such an expedition," retorted Mr.

Cameron with amus.e.m.e.nt. "Morally, the best thing you can do is to look up the answer to your question yourself. It is good for you. However, because the subject happens to interest me, I am going to be weak enough to reply to your query. Printing did follow the hand-illuminated and hand-penned ma.n.u.scripts and books; but before printed books made their appearance, there was an interval when printers tried to say what they had to say by means of pictures. You know how we give a child a picture book as a first approach to more serious reading. He is too undeveloped to comprehend printed words; but he can understand pictures. It was just so in the olden days. The uneducated ma.s.ses of people were as simple as children. Hence the pioneer printers' initial efforts were turned in the direction of playing cards, pictures for home decoration--or _images_, as they were called--and genuine picture books, where the entire story was told by a series of ill.u.s.trations."

Mr. Cameron paused in his narrative.

"You can readily see, if you think for a moment," he presently went on, "how such an innovation came about. Paper had not been invented, and vellum was not only costly but too limited in supply to permit many books being printed. Moreover, as I told you, hand in hand with this objection was the fact that the majority of the public had no interest in learning. Their intellects were immature. They were nothing but grown-up children, and you know how children like games and picture books. Well, those are the reasons why the next step in the development of printing was in the direction of making playing cards. A coa.r.s.e, thick, yellowish paper was beginning to be produced--the first crude attempt at paper-making--and on this material were engraved woodcuts of varying degrees of artistic merit. Some of the designs were merely ugly and clumsy; but some, on the other hand, were really exquisite examples of hand-coloring, unique and quaint in pattern. Thus playing cards came speedily into vogue. The finest ones were painted on tablets of ivory, or engraved on thin sheets of silver. It is interesting, too, to note that the old conventional designs then in use have, with very little modification, persisted up to the present day. Probably the playing cards in common use were printed by the same crude method as were the images, and unfortunately history has failed to unravel just what that method was. They may possibly have been stenciled. All we have been able to learn is that cards, images (which were in reality religious pictures), and stenciled altar cloths--the first primitive printing on cloth--all appeared very early in southern Europe, playing cards having their origin in Venice, where in 1400 and even before that date we read of the Venetians playing cards."

"Do you suppose their games were anything like ours?" questioned Paul, much interested.

"I doubt it. Probably, for example, there was no bridge whist in those days," said his father, with a chuckle. "And I'll wager, too, the Venetians were quite as happy and as well off without it. The games of the time were doubtless much more simple. But whatever they were, they proved to be so fascinating that they soon became an actual menace.

Amus.e.m.e.nts were few in those dull, monotonous days, when there were neither theaters, books, moving pictures, railroads, or automobiles. One day was much like another. Therefore even the clergy welcomed a diversion and devoted so much time to cards that the recreation had to be forbidden them. Now and then some great religious movement would sweep over the land and break up card-playing; but after a little respite people always returned to it with even greater zest than before.

Nor was it a wholly bad thing. In the absence of schools the games quickened the intellect and made the common people mentally more alert; the ignorant were also trained by this means to count and solve simple problems in arithmetic, of which most of them knew nothing."

"That's a funny way to get arithmetic lessons," said Paul.

"Yet you can see that a knowledge of numbers could be thus obtained?"

"Why, yes. Of course. But I never thought of it before."