The Gentleman from Indiana | Page 3

whose one surreptitious eye betokened both indolence of
disposition and a certain furtive shrewdness. He collected all the
outstanding subscriptions he could, on the morning of the issue just
mentioned, and, thoughtfully neglecting several items on the other side
of the ledger, departed from Plattville forever.
The same afternoon a young man from the East alighted on the
platform of the railway station, north of the town, and, entering the
rickety omnibus that lingered there, seeking whom it might rattle to

deafness, demanded to be driven to the Herald Building. It did not
strike the driver that the newcomer was precisely a gay young man
when he climbed into the omnibus; but, an hour later, as he stood in the
doorway of the edifice he had indicated as his destination, depression
seemed to have settled into the marrow of his bones. Plattville was
instantly alert to the stranger's presence, and interesting conjectures
were hazarded all day long at the back door of Martin's Dry-Goods
Emporium, where all the clerks from the stores around the Square came
to play checkers or look on at the game. (This was the club during the
day; in the evening the club and the game removed to the drug, book,
and wall-paper store on the corner.) At supper, the new arrival and his
probable purposes were discussed over every table in the town. Upon
inquiry, he had informed Judd Bennett, the driver of the omnibus, that
he had come to stay. Naturally, such a declaration caused a sensation,
as people did not come to Plattville to live, except through the
inadvertency of being born there. In addition, the young man's
appearance and attire were reported to be extraordinary. Many of the
curious, among them most of the marriageable females of the place,
took occasion to pass and repass the sign of the "Carlow County
Herald" during the evening.
Meanwhile, the stranger was seated in the dingy office upstairs with his
head bowed low on his arms. Twilight stole through the dirty
window-panes and faded into darkness. Night filled the room. He did
not move. The young man from the East had bought the "Herald" from
an agent; had bought it without ever having been within a hundred
miles of Plattville. He had vastly overpaid for it. Moreover, the price he
had paid for it was all the money he had in the world.
The next morning he went bitterly to work. He hired a compositor from
Rouen, a young man named Parker, who set type all night long and
helped him pursue advertisements all day. The citizens shook their
heads pessimistically. They had about given up the idea that the
"Herald" could ever amount to anything, and they betrayed an innocent,
but caustic, doubt of ability in any stranger.
One day the new editor left a note on his door; "Will return in fifteen

minutes."
Mr. Rodney McCune, a politician from the neighboring county of
Gaines, happening to be in Plattville on an errand to his henchmen,
found the note, and wrote beneath the message the scathing inquiry,
"Why?"
When he discovered this addendum, the editor smiled for the first time
since his advent, and reported the incident in his next issue, using the
rubric, "Why Has the 'Herald' Returned to Life?" as a text for a rousing
editorial on "honesty in politics," a subject of which he already knew
something. The political district to which Carlow belonged was
governed by a limited number of gentlemen whose wealth was ever on
the increase; and "honesty in politics" was a startling conception to the
minds of the passive and resigned voters, who discussed the editorial
on the street corners and in the stores. The next week there was another
editorial, personal and local in its application, and thereby it became
evident that the new proprietor of the "Herald" was a theorist who
believed, in general, that a politician's honor should not be merely of
that middling healthy species known as "honor amongst politicians";
and, in particular, that Rodney McCune should not receive the
nomination of his party for Congress. Now, Mr. McCune was the
undoubted dictator of the district, and his followers laughed at the
stranger's fantastic onset.
But the editor was not content with the word of print; he hired a horse
and rode about the country, and (to his own surprise) he proved to be an
adaptable young man who enjoyed exercise with a pitchfork to the
farmer's profit while the farmer talked. He talked little himself, but
after listening an hour or so, he would drop a word from the saddle as
he left; and then, by some surprising wizardry, the farmer, thinking
over the interview, decided there was some sense in what that young
fellow said, and grew curious to see what the young