Nor was he alone in this spirit of dissatisfaction with Solon. The too-trustful editor of the Argus was frankly derided. He was a Boss at whom they laughed openly. They waited, however, with interest for the subsequent issues of this paper.
The Banner that week contained the following bit of news:—
DASTARDLY ASSAULT IN BROAD DAYLIGHT
Early last Thursday evening, as Colonel J. Rodney Potts, dean of the Slocum County bar, was enjoying a quiet stroll along our beautiful river bank near Cady's mill, he was set upon by a gang of ruffians and would have been foully dealt with but for his vigorous resistance. Being a man of splendid proportions and a giant's strength, the Colonel was making gallant headway against the cowardly miscreants when his foot slipped and he was precipitated into the chilling waters of the mill-race at a point where the city fathers have allowed it to remain uncovered. Seeing their victim plunged into a watery grave, as they thought, the thugs took to their heels. The Colonel extricated himself from his perilous plight, by dint of herculean strength, and started to pursue them, but they had disappeared from sight in the vicinity of Crowder & Fancett's lumber yard. Things have come to a pretty pass, we must say, if such a dastardly outrage as this should be allowed to go unpunished. Now that Colonel Potts has brought suit against the city we suppose the council will have that mill-race covered. We have repeatedly warned them about this. We wonder if they ever heard a well-known saying about "locking the stable door after horse is stolen," etc.
The card of Colonel Potts, printed elsewhere in this issue, is a sufficient refutation of the malicious gossip that has been handed back and forth lately that he had planned to leave Little Arcady. It looks now like certain busybodies in this community had over-stepped themselves and been hoisted up by their own petard. The Colonel is a fine man for County Judge, and we bespeak for him the suffrages of every voter who wants an honest judiciary.
Westley Keyts, reading this, wanted to know what a petard was. Inquiry disclosed that he hoped it might be something that could be used upon Potts to the advantage of almost every one concerned. But in the minds of others of us an agonized suspicion now took form. Had the letters been upon Potts when he went down? Had they been saved? Were they legible? And would he use them?
It was decided that Solon Denney should try to illuminate this point before taking the candidacy of Potts seriously. In the next issue of the Argus, therefore, was this paragraph, meant to be provocative:—
God's providence has been said to watch over fools and drunkards. We guess this is so; and that the pretensions of a certain individual in our midst to its watchfulness in the double capacity indicated can no longer be in doubt.
These lines did their work. The next Banner spoke of a foul conspiracy whose nefarious end it was to blacken the sterling character of a good man, of that Nestor of the Slocum County Bar, Colonel J. Rodney Potts. As testimony that the best citizens of the town were not involved with this infamous ring, it had extorted from Colonel Potts his consent to print certain letters from these gentlemen setting forth the Colonel's surpassing virtues in no uncertain terms—letters which his innate modesty had shrunk from making public, until goaded to desperation by the hell-hounds of a corrupt and subsidized opposition.
The letters followed in a terrific sequence—a series of laudations which the Chevalier Bayard need not have scorned to evoke.
Then we waited for Solon, but he was rather disappointing. Said the next Argus:—
We have heretofore considered J.R. Potts to possess the anti-social instincts of a parasite without its moderate spirit of enterprise. But we were wrong. We now concede the spirit of enterprise. As for this candidacy of Potts, Horace Greeley once said, commenting, we think, on some action of Weed's, "I like cool things, of ordinary dimensions—an iceberg or a glacier; but this arctic circle of coagulation appalls credulity and paralyzes indignation. Hence my numbness!" Hence, also, our own numbness. But, though Speech lieth prone on a paralytic's couch, ACTION is hearty and stalketh willingly abroad. In this campaign it will speak louder than words. Yea! it will be heard high above Noah Webster's entire assemblage of such of them as are decent. That is all! J.R.P., take notice!