orm of politics had long
since softened, and nowadays when the whirligig of affairs threw the two
men together, as it did not infrequently, they met on the easiest and
friendliest terms. West liked Plonny, as everybody did, and of Plonny's
sincere liking for him he never had the slightest doubt.

In fact, Mr. Neal's present call was to report that the manner in which
a lady brushes a midge from her summering brow was no simpler than the
wiping of James E. Winter off the board of Blaines College.

That topic being disposed of, West introduced another.

"Noticed the way the _Chronicle_ is jumping on me with all four feet,
Plonny?" he asked, with rather a forced laugh. "Why can't those fellows
forget it and leave me alone?"

By a slow facial manoeuvre, Mr. Neal contrived to make his cigar look
out upon the world with contemptuousness unbearable.

"Why, nobody pays no attention to them fellers' wind, Mr. West. You
could buy them off for a hundred dollars, ten dollars down, and have
them praising you three times a week for two hundred dollars,
twenty-five dollars down. I only take the paper," said Mr. Neal,
"because their Sunday is mighty convenient f'r packin' furniture f'r
shipment."

The _Chronicle_ was the only paper Mr. Neal ever thought of reading, and
this was how he stabbed it in the back.

"I don't want to butt in, Mr. West," said he, rising, "and you can stop
me if I am, but as a friend of yours--why are you botherin' yourself at
all with this here kid's-size proposition?"

"What kid's-size proposition?"

"This little two-by-twice grammar school that tries to pass itself off
for a college. And you ain't even boss of it at that! You got a gang of
mossbacks sitting on your head who don't get a live idea among 'em wunst
a year. Why, the archangel Gabriel wouldn't have a show with a lot of
corpses like them! Of course it ain't my business to give advice to a
man like you, and I'm probably offendin' you sayin' this, but someway
you don't seem to see what's so plain to everybody else. It's your
modesty keeps you blind, I guess. But here's what I don't see: why don't
you come out of this little hole in the ground and get in line?"

"In line?"

"You're dead and buried here. Now you mention the _Evening Windbag_ that
nobody pays no more attention to than kids yelling in the street. How
about having a paper of your own some day, to express your own ideas and
get things done, big things, the way you want 'em?"