B. B.’s desk was a roll top, its pigeonholes frazzly with letters and papers jammed into them to the bursting point. The desk itself was littered with newspapers and notes and notebooks and scratch pads made out of old order blanks. There was an old iron inkwell, a tin box full of pins, a pencil or two. In a little hexagonal glass bottle at one side, a newly hatched humming bird which had fallen from the nest and been killed was preserved in alcohol. Not so large as a bumblebee, and not nearly so impressive. For paper weight, B. B. used a witch ball, taken from the stomach of a steer that Ned Howell had butchered. A round, smooth, yellowish thing, with a hole picked in to show the hair inside. It was as big as a small orange, and looked not unlike one, save that the yellow was dull and muddy. On top of the desk were books, a big hornet’s nest, an ear of corn. There was a curiously marked squash on the open iron safe in the corner; and in the rear of the office a stand-up desk and a smaller one at which a person might sit were littered with the miscellany of B. B.’s business. While Wint was looking over the proofs, an old darky came in from the street. A ragged old man.... Wint knew him. He lived down the creek in a log cabin, and caught catfish, and farmed a plot of ground. His hat was battered, his coat was too big for him, his trousers slumped about his slumping shoes. His name was John Marshum. He took off his hat and looked around the ceiling of the office uneasily, as though he expected it to fall, and Wint and B. B. said hello to him, and he said: “Howdy.” B. B. asked: “Is there anything I can do for you?” The old negro gulped, and said: “I’d like tuh borry a paper and a pencil, ef you please.” B. B. gave him what he asked for, and the old man sat down at the desk in the back of the room, and bit his tongue, and gnawed the pencil, and began to write with infinite pains, slowly, the sweat bursting out of him with the effort. Wint and B. B. went on with their affairs. After a while, the old fellow got up and crossed to B. B. and held out the product of his effort. “Heah’s a paper for you, suh,” he said. When B. B. took it, the old man hurried awkwardly out of the door and disappeared. B. B. read the paper and chuckled, and Wint asked: “What is it?” The editor handed it to him, and he read the scrawl aloud: “‘John Marshum was a very plesint vister at this office Thursdy.’” Wint laughed good-naturedly. “The poor old clown. Wants his name in the paper. You ought to put it in, just to make him feel good.” “I’m going to,” said B. B. “Old John’s one of my best friends in the county. He’s been a subscriber twelve years, and always paid up. You’d be surprised to know how many don’t pay up. And you’d be surprised how many people come in, just as he did, to get their names in the paper. I don’t suppose you ever thought of that.”