One of the “boys” got gloriously drunk—and bragged a little. The Prohib and the Drunk met in the middle of the main town square. There were a lot of people on the street. Ed Cawood, quite young then, is the only one now living that I recall. The Drunk struck at the Prohib, missed, and fell flat in the street. He had to have help to get up. Years later, I heard a brother of the Drunk, a highly respected, and ordinarily very truthful man, in telling the story, say that his brother (called by name) beat the Prohib up scandalously. You can’t rely on what the old fellows tell you. You’ve got to know it—or let someone who does know it, tell it. Hearsay, after it passes through a generation is not reliable. Here I wish to say that, except the grain business, the sidelines enumerated herein were acquired from the long established agency of S. C. Shuemaker, at the same time I bought the newspaper after his death, and that I was not butting in on anyone’s prior rights. Also, I want to say that the ones having those unreasonable notions, had axes to grind. However, a committee came over to my office, and asked me to join them in Moulton’s office. I gave them $1.00 membership fee, and noted the freshly written by-laws calling for an additional dime for each and every time I might be absent from the regular Thursday night meeting. Keep this in mind. The members who had no axes to grind were pretty decent. They felt the need of something to counteract the inroads the Goff merchants were making on the local merchants’ business, and decided that a full front-page write-up in The Spectator was desirable. It was promised for the second week ahead. Nothing was said about paying for this service—and no payment was expected. Henry DeForest told those dominating members that they were acting like spoiled children, or worse—imbeciles. It is really surprising to what absurd lengths some fairly just people will sometimes go in trying to force their will upon others. Now, Thursday night was always a busy night with us — but it was doubly so the next Thursday night. The Board fellows decided that they could not wait two weeks for the write-up, and asked me to advance it one week. I told them that we would accommodate them it we could get Mr. Abbott to reduce his space, or forgo the advertisement altogether. Mr. Abbott would oblige. And this was the straw that ultimately broke the spinal column of the Board of Trade. Our full office force burned the midnight oil that Thursday night—and then some. The Board members trudging up to Moulton’s office could have looked in on us and seen that we were having no picnic. But, by golly, we were a little proud of our accomplishments, hoping it would please. And it did. The thing that caused me to lose faith in the Board was that paltry dime assessed against me for missing the meeting.