"Why, now, they'll see in a minute that the whole thing was meant as a joke. They'll see that the laugh is on _them_, and they'll have a lot of fun out of it, and then send the old cuss along to another town with some more funny letters to fool the next ones." "That's all very _well_, but it isn't high conduct," insisted Bundy. Westley Keyts now achieved the nearest approach to diplomacy I have ever known of him. "Oh, well, Asa, after all, this is a world of give and take. 'Live and let live' is my motto." "We must use common sense in these matters, you know, Bundy," observed Solon, judicially. And that sophistry prevailed, for we were weak unto faintness from our burden. We gave letters setting forth that J. Rodney Potts was the ideal inhabitant of a city larger than our own. We glowed in describing the virtues of our departing townsman; his honesty of purpose, his integrity of character, his learning in the law, his wide range of achievement, civic and military,--all those attributes that fitted him to become a stately ornament and a tower of strength to any community larger in the least degree than our own modest town. And there was the purse. Fifty dollars was suggested by Eustace Eubanks, but Asa Bundy said that this would not take Potts far enough. Eustace said that a man could travel an immense distance for fifty dollars. Bundy retorted that an ordinary man might perhaps go far enough on that sum, but not Potts. "If we are to perpetrate this outrage at all," insisted Bundy, pulling in calculation at his little chin-whisker, "let us do it thoroughly. A hundred dollars can't take Potts any too far. We must see that he keeps going until he could never get back--" We all nodded to this. "--and another thing, the farther away from this town those letters are read,--why, the better for our reputations." A hundred dollars it was. Purse and letters were turned over to Solon Denney to deliver to Potts. The _Argus_ came out with its promised eulogy, a thing so fulsome that any human being but J. Rodney Potts would have sickened to read it of himself. But our little town was elated. One could observe that last day a subdued but confident gayety along its streets as citizens greeted one another. On every hand were good fellowship and kind words, the light-hearted salute, the joyous mien. It was an occasion that came near to being festal, and Solon Denney was its hero. He sought to bear his honors with the modesty that is native to him, but in his heart he knew that we now spoke of him glibly as the Boss of Little Arcady, and the consciousness of it bubbled in his manner in spite of him.