So great was the passion for puffery among them that designing men who heard of it came along quite frequently, and wrote the people up in special publications devoted to that kind of literature. There would be a pretence that the special edition was to be devoted to the town, but it really consisted of a few lines at the beginning, stating that Davy's Bend had more natural advantages than any other town in the world, and four pages of puffs of the people, at so much per line; whereupon the men made fun of all the notices except their own, believing that its statements were true, and generally accepted as a part of the town's history. A few of those who were able had engravings inserted, and the puff writers, in order to make the notices and bills as large as possible, told how long and how often the subjects had been married; how many children they had, together with their names, where they came from, and much other mild information of this character. It was known that many of the complimentary sketches were written by the persons to whom they referred; but while Harrisonfield, the grocer, gave wide circulation to the fact that Porterfield, of the dry-goods store, had referred to himself as an intellectual giant, and a business man of such sterling ability that he had received flattering offers to remove to Ben's City, he did not know that Porterfield was proving the same indiscretion with reference to himself. Every new man who wrote up the town in this manner was more profuse with compliments of the people than his predecessor had been; and finally the common language was inadequate to describe their greatness, and they longed for somebody to come along who could "write," and who could fully explain how much each one was doing for the town; but although they all professed to be doing a great deal constantly for Davy's Bend, there was no reason to believe that any of them were accomplishing anything in this direction, for it could not have been duller than it was in the year of our Lord just referred to. But there was an exception to this rule, as there is said to be to all others,--Thompson Benton, the merchant; the dealer in everything, as the advertisements on his wrapping-paper stated, for he advertised nowhere else. But he was reliable and sensible, as well as stout and surly; so it was generally conceded that he was the foremost citizen of the Bend. Not that he made a pretence to this distinction; old Thompson was modest as well as capable, and whatever good was said of him came from the people themselves. Had there been new people coming to Davy's Bend occasionally, it is possible that old Thompson would not have been the leading citizen, for it was said that he "improved on acquaintance," and that people hated the ground he walked on until they had known him a dozen years or more, and found out his sterling virtues; but they had all known him a great many years, and therefore admired him in spite of themselves.