Page:Newspaper writing and editing.djvu/269

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him for several minutes, leaving him on the ground to find his way home alone.

Physicians who examined him declared that he may be disabled permanently.



6. Rewrite the following humorous story, making it more effective in every way possible.


Tommy is a hero to-day. All his playmates that live on Greene street, near Wolcott avenue, are envious, and speak to him in awed whispers, for did he not go to hunt a Saracen and return covered with bean-juice and glory? All their mothers, too, are keeping a sharp watch on the family crockery.

This is how it happened:

Papa Devine had told Tommy about a lot of men who called themselves Crusaders, who went to lick a lot of other chaps known as Saracens. And when papa told him how the Crusaders wore armor plates on their chests and backs and arms and legs and big helmets on their heads, Tommy decided that he would take a crack at the Saracens himself.

When Papa Devine went out, and Mamma Devine was busy upstairs, Tommy thought it would be a good time to start on his crusade.

Going into the kitchen, he tied a frying pan about his neck so that it hung down over his stomach, strung the lid of the clothes boiler over his back, and then sought a helmet that would resist the swords and battle-axes of the enemy.

As he pondered he sniffed the air. Then a bright idea came. Cautiously he opened the stove door. Mamma Devine was cooking beans à la Boston and Tommy Devine drew forth a big round stone pot full of the delicious fruit. Carefully he emptied the contents into the sink and thrust the pot on his head.

The bean juice ran down into his eyes and ears, but that didn't matter—he was going to hunt Saracens. Then the pot felt uncomfortable, and Tommy decided to take it off and refit it to his head.

Horrors! The pot would not budge. It was stuck on his head. Pull as he might he could not get it off. He sat down in the corner to plan a campaign of action, and consoled himself with licking the dripping bean treacle from his nose end. That got tiresome after a while, so Tommy sought his mother.

Mrs. Devine scolded over the lost beans at first, and then tried to remove the pot, but she, too, was unsuccessful. Then she became alarmed. In desperation she started for the doctor's with the pot still on Tommy's head, the pans jangling around his neck, and the bean juice running down his back.

Passengers in the street car dropped their papers in amazement, for they did not know that Tommy was a crusader, while Mrs.