Probably they were not proud of the greatness of their rival; for they talked of it as a cowardly man might exaggerate the strength of the fellow who had whipped him, using it as an excuse for defeat. Indeed, they were proud of nothing, except their own accounts of the greatness of Davy's Bend a long while before, when the huge warehouses were occupied, and before Capital had combined against it; of this they talked in a boastful way, magnifying everything so much that many of the listeners who had not heard the beginning of the conversation imagined that they were talking of Ben's City; but of bettering their present condition they had no thought,--by common consent it was so very bad that attempts to become prosperous again were useless, so the Bend was a little worse off every year, like an old and unsuccessful man. Most of the business men of Davy's Bend had been clerks in the days of the town's prosperity, making their own terms when their energetic employers wanted to get away, and in spite of the general dullness and lack of success, they entertained very good opinions of themselves; for no difference what a citizen's misfortunes were, he loaded them all on the town, and thus apologized for his own lack of ability. But for the circumstance that he was tied to Davy's Bend, he would have been great and distinguished; they all said the same thing, and in order to get his own story believed, every man found it necessary to accept the explanations of the others, or pretend to; so it happened that the people did not hold themselves responsible for anything,--the town in which they lived was to blame for everything that was disagreeable, and was denounced accordingly. The esteem with which the people regarded themselves was largely due to the manner in which they were referred to in the local paper, a ribald folio appearing once a week. None of the business men were advertisers, but they all gave the publisher free pardon if he referred to them in complimentary terms in his reading columns, and sent in his bill. Thus, the merchant who did not own the few goods he displayed was often referred to as a merchant prince, with an exceedingly shrewd business head on his shoulders. Sometimes notices of this character were left standing from week to week by the shiftless editor; a great number of them would occasionally get together on the same page, referring to different men as the shrewdest, the wisest, the most energetic, etc.; and it was very ridiculous, except to the persons concerned, who believed that the people read the notices with great pleasure.