The thought of Nort looking rather mistily down the common--he was standing just in front of the Congregational Church--and asking, "What town am I in, anyhow?" lingers in my memory as one of the amusing things I have known. Late in June I began to feel distinctly the premonitory rumblings and grumblings of the storm which was now rapidly gathering around the _Star_. It was a very clever Frenchman, I believe--though not clever enough to make me remember his name--who, upon observing certain disturbances in the farther reaches of the solar system, calculated by sheer mathematical genius that there was an enormous planet, infinitely distant from the sun, which nobody had yet discovered. It was thus by certain signs of commotion in one of its issues that I recognized a portentous but undiscovered Neptune, which was plainly disturbing the course of the _Star_. A big new advertisement stared at me from the middle of the first page, and there was a certain crisp quality in some of the reading notices--from which the letters "adv" had been suspiciously omitted--the origin of which I could not recognize. The second week the change was even more marked. There were several smart new headings: "Jots and Tittles from Littleton," I remember, was one of them, and even the sanctity of the editorial column had been invaded with an extraordinary production quite foreign to the Captain's pen. It was entitled: "_All Together Now! Boost Hempfield!_" I can scarcely describe how I was affected by these changes; but I should have realized that any man bold enough to hitch his wagon to a star must prepare himself for a swift course through the skies, and not take it amiss if he collides occasionally with the heavenly bodies. I think it was secretly amusing to Harriet during the weeks that followed my first great visit to the printing-office to watch the eagerness with which I awaited the postman on the publication days of the _Star_. I even went out sometimes to meet him, and took the paper from his hand. I have been a devoted reader of books these many years, but I think I have never read anything with sharper interest than I now began to read the _Star_. I picked out the various items, editorials, reading notices, and the like, and said to myself: "That's the old Captain's pungent pen," or "Anthy must have written that," or "I warrant the Scotchman, Fergus, had a finger in _that_ pie." As I read the editorials I could fairly see the old Captain at his littered desk, the cat rubbing against his leg, the canary singing in the cage above him, and his head bent low as he wrote. And I was disturbed beyond measure by the signs of an unknown hand at work upon the _Star_. "I thought, David, you did not care for country newspapers," said my sister. She wore that comfortably superior smile which becomes her so well. The fact is, she _is_ superior. "Well," said I, "you may talk all you like about Browning and Carlyle----"