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“Well I must draw to a dose, Yours truly

“Your father.”

“Wm. Rollinson” was not aware that he was known to his colleagues and the lobby and the Press as “Uncle Billy” until informed thereof by a public print. He stood, one night, on the edge of a laughing group, when a reporter turned to him and said:

“The Constellation would like to know Representative Rollinson’s opinion of the scandalous story that has just been told.”

The old man, who had not in the least understood the story, summoned all his faculties, and, after long deliberation, bent his plaintive eyes upon the youth and replied:

“Well, sir, it’s a-stonishing, a-stonishing!”

“Think it’s pretty bad, do you?”

Some of the crowd turned to listen, and the old fellow, hopelessly puzzled, stroked his beard with a trembling hand, and then, muttering, “Well, young man, I expect you better excuse me,” hurried away and left the place. The next morning he found the following item tacked to the tail of the “Legislative Gossip” column of the Constellation:

“UNCLE BILLY ROLLINSON HORRIFIED

“Yesterday a curious and amusing story was current among the solons at the Nagmore Hotel. It seems that the wife of a country member of the last legislature had been spending the day at the hotel and the wife of a present member from the country complained to her of the greatly increased expenditure appertaining to the cost of living in the Capital City. ‘Indeed,’ replied the wife of the former member, ‘that is curious. But I suppose my husband is much more economical than yours, for he brought home $1.500, that he’d saved out of his salary.’ As the salary is only $456, and the gentleman in question did not play poker, much hilarity was indulged in, and there were conjectures that the economy referred to concerned his vote upon a certain bill before the last session, anent which the lobby pushing it were far from economical. Uncle Billy Rollinson, the Gentleman from Wixinockee, heard the story, as it passed from mouth to mouth, but he had no laughter to greet it. Uncle Billy, as every one who comes in contact with him knows, is as honest as the day is long, and the story grieved and shocked him. He expressed the utmost horror and consternation, and requested to be excused from speaking further upon a subject so repugnant to his feelings. If there were more men of this stamp in politics, who find corruption revolting instead of amusing, our legislatures would enjoy a better fame.”

Uncle Billy had always been agitated by the sight of his name in print. Even in the Wixinockee County Clarion, it dumbfounded him and gave him a strange feeling that it must mean somebody else, but this sudden blaze of metropolitan fame made him almost giddy. He folded the paper quickly and placed it under his coat, feeling vaguely that it would not do to be seen reading it. He murmured feeble answers during the day, when some of his colleagues referred to it; but when he reached his own little room that evening, he spread it out under his oil-smelling lamp and read it again. Perhaps he read it twenty times over before the supper bell rang. Perhaps the fact that he was still intent upon it accounted for his not hearing the bell, so that his landlady had to call him.

What he liked was the phrase: “Honest as the day is long.” He did not go to the hotel that night. He went back to his room and read the Constellation. He liked the Constellation. Newspapers were very kind, he thought. Now and then, he would pick up his pile of legislative bills and try to spell through the ponderous sentences, but he always gave it up and went back to the Constellation. He wondered if Hurlbut had read it. Hurlbut had. The leader had even told the author of the item that he was glad somebody could appreciate the kind of a man Uncle Billy was, and his value to the body politic.