CHAPTER VI
THE EDITOR'S ADVICE COLUMN
"I'm a good deal worried over Elijah," Miss Clegg said to Mrs. Lathrop, one day when the new paper was about three weeks old, and when the town had begun to take both it and its editor with reasonable calm; "he does have so many ideas. Some of his ideas are all right as far as I can see, but he has 'em so thick an' fast that it worries me more'n a little. It ain't natural to have new ideas all the time an' no one in this community ever does it. He's forever tellin' me of some new way he's thought of for branchin' out somewhere an' his branches make me more'n a little nervous. The old ways is good enough for us an' I try to hold him down to that idea, but first he wants me to get a new kind of flatirons as takes off while you heat it, an' next he wants me to fix the paper all over new.
"I brought over somethin' as he wrote last night to read you, an' show you how curious his brains do mix up things. He brought it down this mornin' an' read it to me, an' I asked him to give it to me to read to you. I was goin' to bring it to you anyway, but then he said as I could too, so it's all right either way. It's some of his new ideas an' he said he'd be nothin' but glad to have you hear 'em 'cause he says the more he lives with me the more respect he's got for your hearin' an' judgment. He asked me what I thought of it first, an' I told him frank an' open as I did n't know what under the sun to think of it. I meant that, too, for I certainly never heard nothin' like it in my life afore, so he said we could both read it to-day an' I could tell him what we thought to-night, when he come home.
"Wh—" asked Mrs. Lathrop, with real interest.
"Well, seems he's been thinkin' as it's time to begin to show us how up-to-date he looks on life, he says, an' as a consequence he's openin' up what he calls the field of the future. He says he's goin' to have a editorial this week on beginnin' from now on to make every issue of the Megaphone just twice as good as the one afore. I told him if he really meant what he said it could n't possibly be worth no dollar a year now, but he said wait an' see an' time would tell an' virtue be her own reward. He says he's goin' to make arrangements with a woman in the city for a beauty column, an' arrangements with some other woman as is a practical preserver, an' have a piece each time on how to be your own dressmaker once you get cut out; I thought that these things was about enough for one paper, but oh my! he went on with a string more, as long as your arm. He's goin' to begin to have a advice column too, right off, an' that's this I've brought over to read you; he says lots of folks want advice an' don't want to tell no one nor pay nothin' an' they can all write him an' get their answers on anythin' in the wide world when the paper comes out Saturday. I could n't but open my eyes a little at that, for I know a many as need advice as I should n't consider Elijah knew enough to give, but Elijah's a man an' in consequence don't know anythin' about how little he does know, so I did n't say nothin' more on that subject. He's full of hope an' says he's soon goin' to show big city papers what genius can do single-handed with a second-hand printin' press, an' he talked an' talked till I really had to tell him that if he did n't want his breakfast he'd have to go back to bed or else down town."
"Is the—" asked Mrs. Lathrop.
"Yes, this is it. He done it last night an' he give it to me this mornin' to read to you. It's to be called 'The Advice Column' an' he's goin' to head it 'Come to My Bosom' an' sign it 'Aunt Abby' 'cause of course if he signed it himself he'd be liable for breach of promise from any girl as read the headin' an' chose to think he meant her."
"But who—?" began Mrs. Lathrop.
"Why, nobody the first week, of course. He had to make 'em up himself—an' the answers too, an' that's what makes it all seem so silly to me. But he did work over it,—he says no one knows the work of gettin' people stirred up to enthusiasm in a small town like this, an' he says he'd ought to have a martyr's crown of thorns, he thinks, for even thinkin' of gettin' a advice column started when most of his energies is still got to go tryin' to get our fund for the famine big enough to make it pay to register the letter when the cheque goes. He says the trouble with the fund is no one has no relations there an' a good many thought as it was mostly Chinamen as is starvin' anyhow. Elijah says the world is most dreadful hard-hearted about Chinamen—they don't seem to consider them as of any use a tall. He says it's mighty hard to get up a interest in anythin' here anyhow, Lord knows—for he says that San Francisco fund an' what become of it has certainly been a pill an' no mistake. The nearest he come to that was gettin' a letter as Phœbe White wrote the deacon about how the government relief train run right through the town she's in, but Elijah says after all his efforts he has n't swelled the famine fund thirty-five cents this week. He says Clightville has give nine dollars an' Meadville has give fifteen dollars an' two barrels an' a mattress, if anybody wants it C. O. D., an' here we are stuck hard at six dollars an' a quarter an' two pennies as the minister's twins brought just after they choked on them licorish marbles."