"Who said so?" queried Jap, sticking away at the last legislative report. "Nobody but him--as far as I can find out," Bill returned, grinning knowingly. "It seems that they had a mess of turnip greens, from cellar sprouts, and they gave him cramps. He was dozing under paregoric when the idea hit him. It grew like the turnip sprouts, fast but pale. He wants us to water the sprouts and give 'em air, so that they'll get color in them." "How much did he send in for the color?" asked Jap, climbing down interestedly. The Associate Editor flashed a two-dollar bill. "I told Pap that if any opposition sprouted, he'd have to raise the ante," he remarked. "He squealed loud enough when I squeezed him for this, but I convinced him that we had about done away with charity practice. Told him the _Herald_ was out of the amateur class, and after this election the ante 'd be five bones." "Well," conceded Jap, "as he is Flossy's brother, we'll have to spread it on thick for the low price of introduction. Look up that woodcut of Sames, the Chautauqua lecturer. If you'll chisel off the beard, we can use it for the Judge. I think that we will kill that story you cribbed from the St. Louis _Republic_, about the President's morning canter with his family physician, and run the Judge along the first column. By the way, Bill, it would be a good idea to trace his career from joyous boyhood to the dignity of the judicial office. What judge was he? Since I have known him, he has never 'worked at the bench.'" Bill grinned wickedly. "He was judge of live stock at the county fair!" "Fallen is Caesar!" Jap exploded. "What can we say about him?" "Nothin' for certain, as Kelly Jones says," Bill lamented. "I never tried fiction," Jap averred, "but for the honor of the first aspirant to the office of Mayor of Bloomtown, and the greater glory of our Associate Editor, I am going to plunge." And plunge he did. When the town read the eulogium that Jap spread upon the front page of the _Herald_ it gasped as from a sudden cold plunge, sat up, rubbed its eyes, and concluded that it had somehow failed to understand or appreciate its foremost son. Hollins, the leading grocer, and Bolton, the furniture dealer, had felt the itch for office; and Marquis, the attorney, had stood in his doorway for a week awaiting the delegation that would press upon him the nomination; but all these aspirants faded like poppies in the wake of the reaper. Nobody could be found to buck a sure thing, such as Judge Bowers, backed by the power of the press. The week after election, the _Herald_ sported fifty small flags through its columns, and quoted Wat Harlow's speech in which he declared that Judge William Hiram Bowers was "the noblest Roman of them all." For which Bill accounted to Jap by the astute observation that Rome was a long way off. The Judge hardly caught Wat's meaning, and came into the office to protest.