The usual double column “lead” was devoted wholly to the announcement of the visit of the Walter Scott Campbells of New York and Newport to the Robert Fleming Wards of Kernville, with all biographical data necessary to establish the Campbells in the minds of intelligent readers as persons of indubitable eminence entitled to the most distinguished consideration in every part of the world. Mrs. Campbell, John had learned from “Distinguished American Women,” was a Mayflower descendant, a Colonial Dame and a Daughter of the Revolution, besides being a trustee of eighteen separate and distinct philanthropies, and all these matters were impressively set forth. Mr. Campbell’s clubs in town and country required ten lines for their recital. Any jubilation over the coming of so much magnificence was neatly concealed under the generalization that the horizon of Kernville was rapidly widening and that there was bound to be more and more communication between New York and Kernville. Mrs. Ward, the article concluded, had not yet decided in just what manner she would entertain for the Campbells, but the representative people of the city would undoubtedly have an opportunity to meet her guests.
“The first gun is fired!” John whispered, thrusting the paper through Helen’s bed-room door. “Read and ponder well!”
Mrs. Ward read the announcement aloud at the breakfast table as soberly as though it were a new constitution for her favorite club.
“That Miss Givens who does the society news for the Journal has more sense than I gave her credit for,” she said. “There isn’t a word in that piece that isn’t true. But that portrait of Ruth is a trifle too large; you ought to have warned them about that! When Tetrazzini sang here they didn’t print her picture half as big as that.”
“Well, mother, the Journal simply begged for a photograph. People of note don’t mind publicity. They simply eat it up!”
“Well, the article is really very nice,” said Mrs. Ward, “but I hope they won’t say anything more until the Campbells arrive.”
John, aware that several columns more bearing upon the Campbell visit were already in type in the Journal office, was grateful to Helen for changing the subject to a pertinent discussion of the proper shade of wall paper for the guest-room.
On Tuesday the Journal’s first page contained a news-article on the crying need of enlarged railway facilities, adroitly written to embody the hope of the transportation committee of the Chamber of Commerce, that when Mr. Walter Scott Campbell of the board of directors of the Transcontinental paid his expected visit to the city he would take steps to change the reactionary policy of the road’s operating department. The same article stated with apparent authority that Robert Fleming Ward, the well-known attorney, whose guest Mr. Campbell would be, had pledged himself to assist the mayor and the Chamber of Commerce to the utmost in urging Kernville’s needs upon the great capitalist.
“See here, John, you’ve got to be careful about this Campbell business!” Mr. Ward’s tone was severe. “I know without your telling me you inspired that piece in this morning’s paper. Campbell never saw me in his life and that article gives the impression that he and I are old cronies. It’s going to cause us all a lot of embarrassment. It won’t do!”
“Sorry if it bothers you, father; but there’s nothing untrue in that article. You’ll be the only man in town who can get Campbell’s ear. If he refuses to interest himself in a new freight house and that sort of thing, that’s his affair.”