No open-air political meeting, no Fourth of July speechmaking, no dedication or grand opening had ever given rise to such tumultuous fervor as this. There were cheers and tigers galore for Colonel Wallingford, for the Honorable G. W. Battles, for Judge Lampton, for the Battlesburg _Blade_, for the L., B. & E. Traction line, for the city of Battlesburg, for everything and everybody, until the ecstatic throng was too hoarse to cheer any more; and then, at Colonel Wallingford's cordial solicitation, the entire town moved down to the mansion which, by the magic of his money, this great benefactor had built within and without the shell of the one-time Star Boarding House. They filled his yard, they trampled his grass, they invaded the newly carpeted house, and the male portion of them passed in earnest review before his sideboard. Cakes and sandwiches were on the way in hot haste from Andy Wolf's bake-shop, boxes of cigars stood open upon the porch, ice cream appeared for the ladies. Suddenly there arose sweet strains of music upon the air, and down the street at a quick march, accompanied by happy Billy Ricks, came the Battlesburg brass band. Never before was Battlesburg so spontaneously aroused. Amid that happy throng, Colonel Wallingford, laughing from the sheer joy of feeding people into allegiance, moved like a prince in the midst of his devoted subjects; and while he smilingly accepted their homage, came copies of the Battlesburg _Blade_, wet from the press, an extra special edition. Great piles of these were kept replenished upon the porch throughout the evening, so that every inhabitant of the city of promise should know all the golden future that lay before him--and learn to subscribe. Battlesburg was at last to become the New Metropolis of the West; her citizens were to be in the very vortex of a vast whirlpool of wealth, and not one of them but should wax rich. From the East and from the West, from villages and farms, trade would rush in an endless stream aboard the trolley cars of the L., B. & E. traction line; Main Street of Battlesburg should become a Mecca where countless pilgrims would leave their stream of bright and shining dollars; as business increased, property values would rise; with the first singing of the trolleys a hundred-dollar lot would be worth a thousand. And all this through the advent of that master magician of the modern commercial world, Colonel J. Rufus Wallingford!