"So the editor thought over his friends and run right down the news column, telling what there wasn't. Like this:—
"'Supper Table Jottings
"'Postmaster Silas Sykes is well.
"'Timothy Toplady has not had a cold since before Christmas. Prudent Timothy.
"'Jimmy Sturgis has not broken his leg yet this year as he did last. Keep it up, Jimmy.
"'Eppleby Holcomb has not been out of town for quite a while.
"'None of the Friendship ladies has given a party all season.
"'The First Church is not burnt down nor damaged nor repaired. Insurance $750.
"'Nothing local is in much of any trouble.
"'Nobody is dead here to-day except the usual ones.
"'Nobody that's got a telephone in has any company at the present writing. Where is the old-time hospitality?
"'Subscriptions payable in advance.
"'Subscriptions payable in advance.
"'Subscriptions payable in advance.'
"It made quite some fun for us, two or three of us happening in the post-office store when the paper come out—Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and me. But we took it some to heart, too, because to live in a town where they ain't nothing active happening all the time is a kind of running account of everybody that's in the town. And us ladies wan't that kind.
"All them locals done to Silas Sykes, though, was to set him fussing over nothing ever happening to him. Silas is real particular about his life, and I guess he gets to thinking how life ain't so over-particular about him.
"'My dum,' he says that night, 'that's just the way with this town. I always calculated my life was goin' to be quite some pleasure to me. But I don't see as it is. If I thought I was going to get sold in my death like I've been in my life, I swan I'd lose my interest in dyin'.'
"Mis' Timothy Toplady was over in behind the counter picking out her butter, and she whirled around from sampling the jars, and she says to Mis' Sykes and me:—
"'Ladies,' she says, 'le's us propose it to the editor that seems to have such a hard job, that us members of Sodality take a hold of his paper for a day and get it out for him and put some news in it, and sell it to everybody, subscribers and all, that one night, for ten cents.'
"Mis' Silas Sykes looks up and stopped winking and breathing, in a way she has when she sights some distant money for Sodality.
"'Land, land,' she says, 'I bet they'd go like hot cakes.'
"But Silas he snorts, scorching.