Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/22

 "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 veritable inspiration. Several of our most public-spirited citizens seemed to father it simultaneously.

"Why should Potts not leave town—why should he not seek out a new field of effort?"

"Field of effort" was a rank bit of poesy, it being certain that Potts would never make an effort worthy of the name in any field whatsoever; but the sense of it was plain.