The Boss of Little Arcady | Page 2

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 circumstance 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 title of "Boss of Little Arcady," a title 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 gods,--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 shine 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 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.
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."
"Exactly, Eustace," answered Solon. "I tell you, gentlemen, this thriving little town needs a canning factory, as we all know; but more than a canning factory it needs a Boss,--one of those strong characters that make tools of their fellow-men, who rule our cities with an iron hand but take care to keep the hand in a velvet glove,--a Boss that is diplomatic, yet an autocrat."
That careless use of the term "Boss" was afterward seen to be unfortunate for Solon. They remembered it against him.
"That's right," said Westley Keyts. "Let's be diplomatic with him."
"How would you begin, Westley, if you don't mind telling us?" Solon had already begun to shape a scheme of his own.
"Why," answered Westley, looking very