ettle. A few
weeks later he wrote Wesley that if he did not come soon and make some
arrangements that he would have to advertise that land. John Wesley heeded
not these warnings, and the land was advertised; and here is where Col.
Billy Miller butted in and bought a cheap farm. Col. Billy had served in
the cavalry during the war and managed to pull through in good shape.
After engaging in several enterprises he founded a weekly newspaper called
_The Shelby Aurora_, and made a great success. So this was the paper the
land was advertised in. When the land was sold, lying twenty-five miles
from town, none of the town people knew anything of it. Colonel Billy
started it at forty cents per acre, which covered the cost of the wagon
and advertisement, and no one bettered it, and he thought he had picked up
a great bargain. Now this writer used to be somewhat connected with the
_Aurora_. When his crops were short and prices low he could always get a
job with Colonel Miller during the winter months to help out making ends
meet, collecting and drumming up new subscribers. _The Aurora_ was very
popular--good coarse print so everybody could read it--and most everybody
took it whether they could read or not. Its chief policy was to flatter
all its patrons--those who paid for it because they paid and those who did
not pay in hopes they would pay. When a man re-covered his house, built a
new stable or cleared a fresh field we called him one of our most
industrious and enterprising citizens, and when a fellow came to town to
buy a side of bacon or a sack of flour on time he was alluded to as being
on a business trip; and when nothing else good could be said of a fellow,
we would puff him on his enthusiastic and steadfast Democracy. The way to
run a county paper is to brag on all the people all the time and keep a
good list of subscribers, and the patent medicine fellows will pay the
running expense. So one winter, as I was ranging around the mountains near
Colonel Miller's farm, I met up with Blacksmith George Towry, a jovial,
good-natured man, who said, "Tell Miller to send me his paper six months
for showing those fellows his farm and trying so hard to sell it to them.
He sent two young men up here and referred them to me and I went over
there and showed it to them and bragged on it all I could. When we got to
the house I said, "You see that large white-oak on the lower side of the
yard, that is the place to have your hog pen; it will a