“Howdy.”
B. B. asked: “Is there anything I can do for you?”
The old negro gulped, and said: “I’d like tuh borry a paper and a pencil, ef you please.”
B. B. gave him what he asked for, and the old man sat down at the desk in the back of the room, and bit his tongue, and gnawed the pencil, and began to write with infinite pains, slowly, the sweat bursting out of him with the effort. Wint and B. B. went on with their affairs.
After a while, the old fellow got up and crossed to B. B. and held out the product of his effort. “Heah’s a paper for you, suh,” he said. When B. B. took it, the old man hurried awkwardly out of the door and disappeared.
B. B. read the paper and chuckled, and Wint asked: “What is it?” The editor handed it to him, and he read the scrawl aloud:
“‘John Marshum was a very plesint vister at this office Thursdy.’”
Wint laughed good-naturedly. “The poor old clown. Wants his name in the paper. You ought to put it in, just to make him feel good.”
“I’m going to,” said B. B. “Old John’s one of my best friends in the county. He’s been a subscriber twelve years, and always paid up. You’d be surprised to know how many don’t pay up. And you’d be surprised how many people come in, just as he did, to get their names in the paper. I don’t suppose you ever thought of that.”
Wint passed the corrected proofs over to B. B. “One or two mistakes,” he said, and the editor sent the proofs up for correction. “What do you do with the darned fools?” Wint asked. “Tell them advertising space costs money?”