m to be both trivial and serious in the same breath.
Again, he is amazingly sensitive for one not devoid of humor. In a
pleasant sense he is acutely aware of himself, and he does not dislike
to know that you feel his quality. Still again, he is bound to spice his
writing. Were it his lot to report events on the Day of Judgment, I
believe the _Argus_ account would be thought too highly colored by many
persons of good taste.

But Little Arcady knows that Solon is loyal to its welfare--knows that
he is fit to wield the mightiest lever of Civilization in its behalf on
Wednesday of each week.

We know now, moreover, that an undercurrent of circumstance existed
which did not even ripple the surface of that apparently facetious
brutality hurled at J. Rodney Potts.

The truth may not be told in a word. But it was in this affair that
Solon Denney won his title of "Boss of Little Arcady," a title first
rendered unto him somewhat in derision, I regret to say, by a number of
our leading citizens, who sought, as it were, to make sport of him.

It began in a jest, as do all the choicest tragedies of the gods,--a few
lines of idle badinage, meant to spice Solon's column of business locals
with a readable sprightliness. The thing was printed, in fact, between
"Let Harpin Cust shine your face with his new razors" and "See that line
of clocks at Chislett's for sixty cents. They look like cuckoos and keep
good time."

"Not much news this week," the item blithely ran, "so we hereby start
the rumor that 'Upright' Potts is going to leave town. We would incite
no community to lawless endeavor, but--may the Colonel encounter swiftly
in his new environment that warm reception to which his qualities of
mind, no less than his qualities of heart, so richly entitle him,--that
reception, in short, which our own debilitated public spirit has timidly
refused him. We claim the right to start any rumor of this sort that
will cheer the souls of an admiring constituency. Now is the time to pay
up that subscription."

The intention, of course, was openly playful--a not subtle sally meant
to be read and forgotten. Yet--will it be credited?--more than one of us
read it so hurriedly, perhaps with so passionate a longing to have it
the truth, as not to perceive its satirical indirections. The rumor
actually lived for a day that Potts was to disembarrass the town of his
presence.

And then, from the fictitious stuff of this rumor was spawned a
veritabl