His requirements were modest, Colonel Wallingford assured them. He demanded no cash bonus whatever. If they would merely provide him the ground to build the shops, and a lot conveniently placed in the center of the city for a freight, baggage and passenger station, and would use their influence with the city council to secure him a franchise, he would be content. He had secured options upon the very pieces of property that would be ideal for the purposes of the L., B. & E., but upon these he would ask no profit whatever, notwithstanding their enhanced value and his right to share in the wealth he had created. If the Chamber of Commerce would merely take up his options, repaying him the amounts he had paid to secure them, he would ask no more, and, further than that, he would take the option money, would add to it a like sum--or more--and with the total amount would purchase a fountain for Courthouse Square as an earnest of his sincere regard for Battlesburg and its enterprising and gentlemanly citizens. The enthusiasm that greeted this announcement was distinctly audible for two blocks each way on Main Street, and in the midst of it the Honorable G. W. Battles arose to once more make the speech of his life. He could assure Colonel Wallingford that there would be no trouble in influencing the City Council to grant him a franchise, for the Chamber of Commerce had means of coercing the City Council; which was a splendid joke, for every member of the City Council was also a member of the Chamber of Commerce, and they were all present. Such a quantity of mutual good will and esteem was never before uncorked in so limited a space as the social room of Odd Fellows' Hall, and Clint Richards was quite lost to find new adjectives for the front page of the next day's issue of the _Blade_. The glorious news, together with some striking illustrations of the healthy advance of Battlesburg real estate, was copied in the papers of Paris, London, Dublin, Berlin and Rome. In those towns, too, the same civic activity was exhibited, the same golden hopes were aroused, the same era of prosperity set in; and the papers of those villages vied with each other in chronicling the evidences of increased wealth that had come upon them. Franchises, therefore, were to be had by the munificent Colonel Wallingford without the asking. Before he could even appeal to them, village councils had given him the exclusive use of their only desirable streets for fifty years without money and without price. Ground for stations was donated everywhere, and when Wallingford started out to secure a right of way from the regenerated farmers, who in these days kept themselves posted by telephone and rural free delivery, his triumphant progress would have sickened with envy the promoters of legitimate traction lines.