“You ought to be ashamed of yourself for having so little to say about Dave Swain’s death,” said Tom King, the newsmonger last week. “Here he worked for 17 years selling your paper and you didn’t say but one paragraph about his death and funeral?”
What Tom King didn’t know about Dave Swain was that he got his flowers in this newspaper shop while he was alive. There wasn’t a man on the force but would do his best to bring a smile to the withered old face of this newsboy in his eighties. Many a Thursday afternoon has David sat around waiting for the paper to go to press, and the boys would pause in their work to pass jolly words of the kind that pleased him most. Many a morning before he made his rounds have they stopped their work to sip with him a cheering drink, happy to bring a smile to his face and to hear his departing, “God will bless you Bud!”
Whatever Dave Swain may have missed because of the iniquities and inequalities of life, he never lost the friendship of the printers. He may have been denied the love of his offspring, he may have failed to win their affection and regard, but those who did not know him in his early days were his friends as much as if they had struggled up with him thru life. They recognized in him only a forlorn old man, doing his best to make his own way, refusing to burden others with his care, spending his last energies in the bitter fight of old age against want and deprivation. His wants were few, his needs simple, and he earned his keep, saving a few dollars, that no one might say the county had to buy his shroud. If little was said after his death, much was said before he died, when it served him best in his struggle for a living, and in this instance the flowers were handed him while he was conscious and could appreciate them. More flowers before the man is gone, instead of wreaths afterwards makes life more happy, and more worth the living. Dave Swain got his before he died.
From the editorial page of the Elizabeth City Independent, Friday, Feb. 20, 1925
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn83025812/1925-02-20/ed-1/seq-4/#words=FEBRUARY+20%2C+1925
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