misgiving about the letters for Potts. Old Asa
Bundy, our banker, wanted to know, somewhat peevishly, if it seemed
quite honest to send Potts to another town with a satchel full of
letters certifying to his rare values as a man and a citizen. What would
that town think of us two or three days later?

"This is no time to split hairs, Bundy," said Solon; and I believe I
added, "Don't be quixotic, Mr. Bundy!"

Hereupon Westley Keyts broke in brightly.

"Why, now, they'll see in a minute that the whole thing was meant as a
joke. They'll see that the laugh is on _them_, and they'll have a lot of
fun out of it, and then send the old cuss along to another town with
some more funny letters to fool the next ones." "That's all very
_well_, but it isn't high conduct," insisted Bundy.

Westley Keyts now achieved the nearest approach to diplomacy I have ever
known of him.

"Oh, well, Asa, after all, this is a world of give and take. 'Live and
let live' is my motto."

"We must use common sense in these matters, you know, Bundy," observed
Solon, judicially.

And that sophistry prevailed, for we were weak unto faintness from our
burden.

We gave letters setting forth that J. Rodney Potts was the ideal
inhabitant of a city larger than our own. We glowed in describing the
virtues of our departing townsman; his honesty of purpose, his integrity
of character, his learning in the law, his wide range of achievement,
civic and military,--all those attributes that fitted him to become a
stately ornament and a tower of strength to any community larger in the
least degree than our own modest town.

And there was the purse. Fifty dollars was suggested by Eustace Eubanks,
but Asa Bundy said that this would not take Potts far enough. Eustace
said that a man could travel an immense distance for fifty dollars.
Bundy retorted that an ordinary man might perhaps go far enough on that
sum, but not Potts.

"If we are to perpetrate this outrage at all," insisted Bundy, pulling
in calculation at his little chin-whisker, "let us do it thoroughly. A
hundred dollars can't take Potts any too far. We must see that he keeps
going until he could never get back--" We all nodded to this.

"--and another thing, the farther away from this town those letters are
read,--why, the better for our reputations."

A hundred dollars it was. Purse and letters were turned over to Solon
Denney to deliver to Potts. The _Argus_ came out with its promised
eulogy, a