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“Thar,” she added, drawing a long breath, “put that in a column of the ‘Clarion,’ same size as the last, and let it work, and that’s all I want of you.”

“A column?” repeated the editor. “Do you know the cost is very expensive, and I COULD put it in a single paragraph?”

“I reckon I kin pay the same as Mr. Dimmidge did for HIS,” said the lady complacently. “I didn’t see your paper myself, but the paper as copied it–one of them big New York dailies–said that it took up a whole column.”

The editor breathed more freely; she had not seen the infamous woodcut which her husband had selected. At the same moment he was struck with a sense of retribution, justice, and compensation.

“Would you,” he asked hesitatingly,–“would you like it illustrated–by a cut?”

“With which?”

“Wait a moment; I’ll show you.”

He went into the dark composing-room, lit a candle, and rummaging in a drawer sacred to weather-beaten, old-fashioned electrotyped advertising symbols of various trades, finally selected one and brought it to Mrs. Dimmidge. It represented a bare and exceedingly stalwart 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 moment’s silent composition with moving lips, “you just put these lines in.”

The editor took up his pencil.

“To Mr. J. D. Dimmidge.–Hope you’re still on R. B.’s tracks. Keep there!–E. J. D.”

The editor wrote down the line, and then, remembering Mr. Dimmidge’s voluntary explanation of HIS “Personal,” waited with some confidence for a like frankness from Mrs. Dimmidge. But he was mistaken.

“You think that he–R. B.–or Mr. Dimmidge–will understand this?” he at last asked tentatively. “Is it enough?”