c Disaster," in the
_Democrat's_ local page. And then we exclaim: "Hurray! Real news at
last," and prowl eagerly down the items only to find that the horrible
wreck was a citizen of Swamp Hollow upon whom a wonderful cure was
effected; that "Her escape" was from inflammatory rheumatism by the aid
of Gettem's Dead Shot Specific, and that the Titanic Disaster is
eclipsed annually by the sad ends of thousands of people who neglect to
take Palaver's Punk Pills. It always makes us mad, but we can't kick. If
it weren't for the patent medicine people, we would have to pay for the
_Democrat_ all by ourselves.

They say that when Editor Ayers first came to Homeburg some forty years
ago he was a bright young man with a great rush of words from the pen,
and that he had a dapper air and was generally admired. The _Democrat_
contained about a page of solid editorial opinion each week on
everything, from the tariff to the duty of Russia, in whatever crisis
was then pending, and people swore by the paper and didn't make up
their opinions until they had read it. But times have changed. We don't
stand in awe of the _Democrat_ any more. Most of us laugh at it, even
those of us who are not financiers enough to keep our subscriptions
called up. We call it the "Weekly Gimlet" and the "Poorly Democrat," and
we make bright remarks to old man Ayers when he asks us for news and
tell him that he ought to turn the paper inside out so that we can read
the boiler plate first and not have to wade through his stuff. But he
doesn't object. Time and toil and the worry of keeping cash enough on
hand to pay the expressman who dumps his ready prints on the floor each
Wednesday and refuses to budge until he has collected $3.24 have taken
the pepper out of him. He doesn't write editorials any more except on
the week following a national election, and they are affairs of duty
which always begin: "Another election has come and gone and the party
of Jackson--"

He has made a living for forty years and has sent two sons through
college from the _Democrat_, and the effort has taken the fight out of
him. I never saw him resent a joke but once. That was when Pelty
Amthorne told him that his wife considered the _Democrat_ to be the best
paper she had ever seen. He let Ayers burst a couple of buttons from his
vest in his swelling pride before he explained that the _Democrat_, when
cut in two, exactly fitted his wife's pantry shelves, and that she
didn't have to tr