“H’m.... The Prof.’s a kind of cabbage that never headed up,” said Tubal, with finality. “He’s got all the roots and leaves, like that kind of a cabbage, and, sim’lar, he hain’t no idee how to fold ’em up, or why he’s a cabbage, nor that cabbages is the chief ingredient of sauerkraut.”
“Yes,” said Carmel, “that’s it.” And for a long time after that she continued to think of Evan Pell as a cabbage which had grown to maturity without fulfilling a cabbage’s chief object in life, which is to head. “Only,” she said, “he’s really just the opposite. He’s never done anything but come to head. He’s comatose from his eyebrows to his toes.”
The second issue of the Free Press had brought faint encouragement. There had been a slight increase in advertising, due to Carmel’s solicitations, but her pleasure in this growth was somewhat dimmed by a guilty feeling that it was not due to any merit of the paper, or of her solicitations, but to a sort of rudimentary gallantry on the part of a few merchants.... Perhaps half a dozen men had lounged in to subscribe, investing a dollar and a half in curiosity.... But, to put the worst face on it, she had held her own.
She really felt she had improved the paper. The columns of personals, which had been intrusted to Evan Pell, were full of items. He had shown an unusual aptitude for observing the minutiæ of the community. Having observed, he would have reported in the language of a treatise on sociology, but Carmel referred him to the files, and admonished him to study the style of the late Uncle Nupley. This he had done grimly, ironically, and the result was a parrotlike faithfulness.... He had also read and corrected all the proofs, to the end that the sensibilities of the community be not offended by grammatical gaucheries.
He had been offended close to resignation when Carmel insisted upon running, in inch-tall, wooden type—across the top of the first page—this query:
WHO IS THE HANDSOMEST MAN IN GIBEON
That was her great idea, born of her interview with Lancelot Bangs. “If papers run beauty contests for women,” she said, “why not run handsome contests for men?... Anyhow, it’ll be fun, and I’m entitled to a little pleasure. Men are vain. It will make talk, and talk is advertising, and advertising pays.”
Evan inveighed against the scheme as undignified, stultifying, and belittling to a dignified profession.
“If it brings in subscriptions—and dollars,” said Carmel, “we should worry!”
Evan closed his eyes in pain. “We should worry!... I beg of you.... That barbaric phrase! The basest argot. Our newspapers should be the palladium of the purity of the language. If such expressions are tolerated——” He stopped abruptly because his mind could not encompass the horrors which would result from their toleration.