Part 1 (1/2)
The Boss of Little Arcady.
by Harry Leon Wilson.
CHAPTER I
HOW THE BOSS WON HIS t.i.tLE
=Late last Thursday evening one Jonas Rodney Potts, better known to this community as ”Upright” Potts, stumbled into the mill-race, where it had providentially been left open just north of Cady's mill. Everything was going along finely until two hopeless busybodies were attracted to the spot by his screams, and fished him out. It is feared that he will recover. We withhold the names of his rescuers, although under strong temptation to publish them broadcast.--_Little Arcady Argus_ of May 21st.=
Looking back to that time from a happier present, I am filled by a genuine awe of J. Rodney Potts. Reflecting upon those benign ends which the G.o.ds chose to make him serve, I can but marvel how lightly each of us may meet and scorn a casual Potts, unrecking his gracious and predestined office in the play of Fate.
Of the present--to me--supreme drama of the Little Country, I can only say that the G.o.ds had selected their agent with a cunning so flawless that suspicion of his portents could not well have been aroused in one lacking discernment like unto the G.o.ds' very own. So trivially, so utterly, so pitiably casual, to eyes of the flesh, was this Potts of Little Arcady, from his immortal soul to the least item of his inferior 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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.
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 circ.u.mstance 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 t.i.tle of ”Boss of Little Arcady,” a t.i.tle 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 G.o.ds,--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 s.h.i.+ne 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 ent.i.tle 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 const.i.tuency. 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 pa.s.sionate 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 disembarra.s.s the town of his presence.
And then, from the fict.i.tious stuff of this rumor was sp.a.w.ned 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.
Increasingly with the years had plans been devised to alleviate the condition of Potts's residence among us. Some of these had required a too definite and artificial abruptness in the mechanics of his removal; others, like Eustace Eubanks's plot for having all our best people refuse to notice him, depended upon a sensitiveness in the person aimed at which he did not possess. Besides, there had been talk of disbarring him from the practice of his profession, and I, as a lawyer, had been urged to instigate that proceeding. Unquestionably there was ground for it.
But now this random pleasantry of Solon Denney's set our minds to working in another direction.
In the broad, pleasant window of the post-office, under the ”NO LOAFING HERE!” sign, half a dozen of us discussed it while we waited for the noon mail. There seemed to be a half-formed belief that Potts might adroitly be made to perceive advantages in leaving us.
”It's a whole lot better to manipulate and be subtle in a case like this,” suggested the editor of the _Argus_. ”Threats of violence, forcible expulsion, disbarment proceedings--all crude--and besides they won't move Potts. Jonas Rodney may not be gifted with a giant intellect, but he is cunning.”
”The cunning of a precocious boy,” prompted Eustace Eubanks, who was one of us. ”He is well aware that we would not dare attempt lawless violence.”