art arm wielding a
large hammer.

"Your husband being a miner,--a quartz miner,--would that do?" he asked.
(It had been previously used to advertise a blacksmith, a gold-beater,
and a stone-mason.)

The lady examined it critically.

"It does look a little like Micah's arm," she said meditatively.
"Well--you kin put it in."

The editor was so well pleased with his success that he must needs make
another suggestion. "I suppose," he said ingenuously, "that you don't
want to answer the 'Personal'?"

"'Personal'?" she repeated quickly, "what's that? I ain't seen no
'Personal.'" The editor saw his blunder. She, of course, had never seen
Mr. Dimmidge's artful "Personal;" THAT the big dailies naturally had not
noticed nor copied. But it was too late to withdraw now. He brought
out a file of the "Clarion," and snipping out the paragraph with his
scissors, laid it before the lady.

She stared at it with wrinkled brows and a darkening face.

"And THIS was in the same paper?--put in by Mr. Dimmidge?" she asked
breathlessly.

The editor, somewhat alarmed, stammered "Yes." But the next moment he
was reassured. The wrinkles disappeared, a dozen dimples broke out where
they had been, and the determined, matter-of-fact Mrs. Dimmidge burst
into a fit of rosy merriment. Again and again she laughed, shaking
the building, startling the sedate, melancholy woods beyond, until the
editor himself laughed in sheer vacant sympathy.

"Lordy!" she said at last, gasping, and wiping the laughter from her wet
eyes. "I never thought of THAT."

"No," explained the editor smilingly; "of course you didn't. Don't you
see, the papers that copied the big advertisement never saw that little
paragraph, or if they did, they never connected the two together."

"Oh, it ain't that," said Mrs. Dimmidge, trying to regain her composure
and holding her sides. "It's that blessed DEAR old dunderhead of a
Dimmidge I'm thinking of. That gets me. I see it all now. Only, sakes
alive! I never thought THAT of him. Oh, it's just too much!" and she
again relapsed behind her handkerchief.

"Then I suppose you don't want to reply to it," said the editor.

Her laughter instantly ceased. "Don't I?" she said, wiping her face into
its previous complacent determination. "Well, young man, I reckon that's
just what I WANT to do! Now, wait a moment; let's see what he said,"
she went on, taking up and reperusing the "Personal" paragraph. "Well,
then," she went on, after a