These qualifying adverbs and adjectives constitute an attempt at faithful reproduction of the community’s attitude toward budding talent. Paris, like all Vermont, like all New England, like small towns all over the planet, was doggedly determined that a loophole should be left, in fact several loopholes, so that in case of failure and fizzle it might be in that crushing position to retort, “I told you so!” To bet on a local son’s ability to rise above the common herd’s tenor of nothing-in-particular and have the wager turn out a loss was more to be deplored than a failure of the nation’s credit system. The grocery-store and barbershop economists could blame the prevailing administration for the latter, but for the former there would be no one to take the ignominy but themselves. It was only natural that there should be those in town who had no patience whatever with the tone of Nathan’s verse. It was sickly, sloppy, moon-sighing stuff, that suggested “dying calves with their mouths full of mush.” Another element, chiefly recruited from the young, unmarried set, or Raveled Ends of Might-Have-Been Romances, clipped out the boy’s verses and mailed them to sweethearts. Or they pasted them in scrapbooks alongside clippings from the Poet’s Corner in the _Boston Sunday Globe_. But as a matter of genuine enthusiasm, the bulk of the local census was phlegmatic. They read the boy’s amateurish little girl rhymes with indifference, waiting for it to be disclosed “whether that mopey Forge young one was a darn bright kid or a goddam fool.” Yet the fact remained that the lad was getting “published.” And every effusion carried its tuppence worth of advertising. Soon the town was forced to sit up and take notice. Some of the best of Nat’s work had been clipped from our smudgy, homely, country sheet and been copied in the _Springfield Union_ or the aforesaid _Boston Globe_. That a lethargic exchange editor in each case, hunting for material to fill odd corners with “hay”, had snipped out the verses with a vast and pardonable ennui, spiked them on a linotype hook and forgotten them, was immaterial, even if it had been generally known. Paris felt duly edified. The effect on Johnathan the day Uncle Joe Fodder, the town philosopher, found the first of Nat’s poems in the _Globe_ and advised John to that effect was as amusing as it was interesting. John had been positive his boy’s propensity for poetry was in the same category with his Abaddonic proclivity toward girls. Realization that fame was being forced upon the family despite his dogged assumption to the contrary came as a shock. A great city newspaper had printed the name of a Forge and circulated the same by hundreds of thousands of copies! What could Johnathan do in the face of such titanic refutation? Nothing but to glow in his heart that the celebrity was his son and then treat the said celebrity as his own personal washpot.