Ayers would write it this way for two reasons. In the first place he hates to write more than one paragraph. Coming after a hard day's work collecting bills and chasing subscribers, it is a wearing effort. Nothing gets much space in the _Democrat_ except obituaries and marriages, and they are all contributed--the former by the relatives and the latter by the minister. In the second place, there wouldn't be any use of wasting a lot of space on a big item because by the time the _Democrat_ comes out, everybody knows all about it, and the mere facts would be stale and unimportant beside the superstructure of soaring fancy which has been built up by the easy-running imaginations of our chief news dispensers on the street corners. And so, when the creamery burns down or the evening fast freight runs through an accommodation on the crossing, the old man puts his duty off until the last minute and then writes a few well-chosen lines merely to let us know that he is on the job and lets no news escape him. When you are running a weekly paper, your competitors in the news business are the talkers in the town who mingle seven days a week and issue a hundred thrilling extras to their fellow citizens before your press day comes around. Besides, as I have said, old man Ayers can't afford to waste much time chasing news. He has to get a living for himself as well as for the _Democrat_, and keeping both his family and the paper alive is a distinct feat performed weekly. His pay-roll for a foreman and two girls must amount to over fifteen dollars a week, and that means cold solid cash which must be wrung from a reluctant public. Seems to me I never go into a store that I don't see old man Ayers trying to collect a little cash on an advertising account or wheedling a subscriber into coming out of the misty past and creeping cautiously down a few years toward the present on his subscription account. If there is anything which we can't do without and for which we positively object to paying real money, it is our home newspaper. Sim Bone has a roaring shoe business and pays cash for his automobiles, but he has often told me that paying good paper money for advertising would be as wasteful as eating it. He carries an ad in the _Democrat_ all the year and changes it about every six months. It's July now, and he is still advertising bargains in overshoes--but he won't pay any money. Ayers has to trade the account out, as he has to do with every other advertiser in the town.