During the early morning hours Miller met his "boss" at the private office of the latter, having previously seen the editor of the _Advertiser_, who offered to sell his paper for twenty-five hundred dollars. The price was considered high, but that being the best that could be done, Miller was ordered to purchase the concern at once. One of Cleverdale's young lawyers was placed in charge of the _Advertiser's_ editorial columns, and the first number devoted itself to Rawlings' treachery and Daley's private character. The latter, the new editor asserted, was, unlike that of Cæsar's wife, not above suspicion, while Senator Hamblin's private character was pure and spotless. The fight between the papers was so full of acrimony that Satan himself would have delighted in it, had there been any possibility of his receiving fire-proof copies. Both candidates were attacked, and the sins of their ancestors were carefully elaborated and fired off as campaign fireworks. Previous to an election, American journalism of the party-organ stripe has a demoralizing influence in the land. The good qualities of candidates are briefly mentioned. But the bad qualities--ah! these are what the party organs delight in. Not the part that their own candidate occupies on the side of virtue; not the good that is in him; not the intellectual qualifications he boasts of; not the nobleness of character he possesses--none of these inspire the editor. No, all of this is nothing: the amount of "pure cussedness" that can be attributed to the opposing candidate is the indicator of journalistic inspiration. Many a man who has thought himself a moral light has in an unguarded moment accepted a nomination, and the astonishment of himself and friends to see how corrupt he suddenly becomes is not infrequently a harbinger of victory for the opposition. The English language can hardly furnish adjectives to qualify such a man. Damned he is inevitably, and his carcass when hung up is filled with arrows dipped in printer's poisoned ink. When a foreigner picks up one of our party organs, during an exciting political campaign, he cannot help thanking his Creator he was not born in a land where public men are such rascals and robbers. Cardinal Wolsey said, "Corruption wins not more than honesty," but the dethroned favorite lived before America had gone into politics on her own account, and then left the work to her parasites instead of attending to it herself. As an index to the feeling of the Cleverdale community, a very interesting incident that occurred after the _Investigator's_ editor came out against Senator Hamblin is valuable. One evening Editor Rawlings, boldly entering the "Shades," walked up to Paddy Sullivan, and extending his hand said: "Good-evening, Paddy."