Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/20

 casual, to eyes of the flesh, was this Potts of Little Arcady, from his immortal soul to the least item of his inforior raiment!

Thus craftily are we fooled by the Lords of Destiny, whose caprice it is to affect remoteness from us and a lofty unconcern for our poor little doings.

There is bitterness in the lines of that Argus paragraph, and a flippant incivility might be read between them by the least discerning.

Arcady of the Little Country, however, knows there is neither bitterness nor real cynicism in Solon Denney, founder, editor, and proprietor of the Little Arcady Argus; motto, "Hew to the Line, Let the Chips Fall Where they May!" Indeed, we do know Solon. Often enough has the Argus hewn inexorably to the line, when that line led straight through the heart of its guiding genius and through the hearts of us all. One who had seen him, as I did, stand uncovered in the presence of his new Washington hand-press, the day that dynamo of Light was erected in the Argus office, could never suppose him to lack humanity or the just reverence demanded by his craft.

We may concede without disloyalty that Solon is peculiar unto himself. In his presence you are cursed with an unquiet suspicion that he may become frivolous with you at any moment,—may, indeed, be so at that moment, despite a due facial gravity and tones of weight,—for he will not infrequently seem to be both trivial and serious in the same breath.