“Isn’t this this year’s list?”
“No. I just thought I’d check up the new payments on the old list. I haven’t had time to make out a new one.”
Our faces fell. The names checked with a cross did not aggregate five hundred.
“I’ll tell you what we’d better do,” observed Michaelson heavily, probably feeling that I had become suddenly depressed. “Suppose we go around and see some of the merchants and ask them if they’ll support us with advertising?”
I agreed, feeling all the while that the whole venture was ridiculous, and together we went about among the silent stores, talking with conservative men, who represented all that was discouraging and wearisome in life. Here they stood all day long calculating in pennies and dimes, whereas the city merchant counted in hundreds and thousands. It was dispiriting. Think of living in a place like this, among such people!
“I might give a good paper my support,” said one, a long, lean, sanctimonious man who looked as though he had narrow notions and a firm determination to rule in his small world. “But it’s mighty hard to make a paper that would suit this community. We’re religious and hard-working here, and we like the things that interest religious and hard-working people. Course if it was run right it might pay pretty well, but I dunno as ’twould neither. You never can tell.”
I saw that he would be one hard customer to deal with anyhow. If there were many like him—— The poor, thin-blooded, calculating world which he represented frightened me.
“How much advertising do you think you could give to a paper that was ‘run’ right?”
“Well, that depends,” he said gloomily and disinterestedly. “I’d have to see how it was run first. Some weeks I might give more than others.”
Michaelson nudged me and we left.