It was decided that Solon Denney should try to illuminate this point before taking the candidacy of Potts seriously.  In the next issue of the Argus, therefore, was this paragraph, meant to be provocative:—­

=God’s providence has been said to watch over fools and drunkards.  We guess this is so; and that the pretensions of a certain individual in our midst to its watchfulness in the double capacity indicated can no longer be in doubt.=

These lines did their work.  The next Banner spoke of a foul conspiracy whose nefarious end it was to blacken the sterling character of a good man, of that Nestor of the Slocum County Bar, Colonel J. Rodney Potts.  As testimony that the best citizens of the town were not involved with this infamous ring, it had extorted from Colonel Potts his consent to print certain letters from these gentlemen setting forth the Colonel’s surpassing virtues in no uncertain terms—­letters which his innate modesty had shrunk from making public, until goaded to desperation by the hell-hounds of a corrupt and subsidized opposition.

The letters followed in a terrific sequence—­a series of laudations which the Chevalier Bayard need not have scorned to evoke.

Then we waited for Solon, but he was rather disappointing.  Said the next Argus:—­

=We have heretofore considered J.R.  Potts to possess the anti-social instincts of a parasite without its moderate spirit of enterprise.  But we were wrong.  We now concede the spirit of enterprise.  As for this candidacy of Potts, Horace Greeley once said, commenting, we think, on some action of Weed’s, “I like cool things, of ordinary dimensions—­an iceberg or a glacier; but this arctic circle of coagulation appalls credulity and paralyzes indignation.  Hence my numbness!” Hence, also, our own numbness.  But, though Speech lieth prone on a paralytic’s couch, ACTION is hearty and stalketh willingly abroad.  In this campaign it will speak louder than words.  Yea! it will be heard high above Noah Webster’s entire assemblage of such of them as are decent.  That is all!  J.R.P., take notice!=

It was jaunty enough, but Potts had unquestionably gained a following.  Indeed he had ably cemented the foundations of one by his magnificent hospitality on that day of days.  His whilom serfs were men not easily offended by faults of taste, and they were voters.  To a man they came out strongly for Potts.

He himself behaved with a faultless discretion.  Above the slurs of the Argus and the bickerings of faction he bore himself as one alienated from earth by the graces of his spirit; and he copiously promised deeds which should in the years to come be as a beauteous garment to his memory.  The glaive of Justice should descend where erstwhile it had corruptly been stayed.  Vice should surfer its meed of retribution, and Virtue come again into its glorious own.