“No,” says he, “but if Plunk and Tallow’ll git out and tag around after that s-surveyor we’ll git some. Just hang around him and ask questions, but don’t l-let on you’re newspaper men. Just be kids.”
So off they went.
They found out that surveyors were going over both routes—the one through Wicksville and the one through Eagle Center. It seems like the company was keeping pretty quiet about the whole thing, but from what Plunk and Tallow could gather, it was pretty sure the trolley line was going through some place.
Well, there was big news, and if Spragg didn’t get hold of it it would be bigger than ever.
We set right to work getting things in shape for the next paper, and called in Tecumseh Androcles Spat to tell him all about it and get him to fix up the paper so it would look exciting. He got the idea right away.
“Will Tecumseh A. Spat dress up this paper? You may take it, young gentlemen, from an authority, that he will. It is an opportunity. This town shall see what a paper with a real story in it should look like. We will hammer them in the eyes with type. We will make our pages leap out to meet them. Ah, this is an occasion such as delights the heart of a compositor and make-up man. I revel in it. Trust me, gentlemen, and you shall not be disappointed.”
And we weren’t. All we had to do was write the stuff and give it to Tecumseh. Why, he hardly took time to eat or sleep! He was that tickled with himself he almost busted out of his clothes, and we had to keep going hard or he’d have run right away from us.
It was two days before we got the stories all written—the trolley line and what Eagle Center thought of Wicksville. Then we did a little advertising of our own. Mark wrote the signs.
The first one, printed in big type and tacked up in front of our office, went like this:
WICKSVILLE INSULTED