Solon was writhing after the manner of uneasy little Roscoe.  The bland but inexorable regard of his inquisitor had subdued him beyond retort.

“I might, again, call your attention to this item.”  And she did, reading with well-trained inflection:—­

“’Kye Mayabb from south of town and Sym Pleydell, who rents the Clemison farm, met up in front of Barney Skeyhan’s place last Saturday afternoon and started to settle an old grudge, while their respective better halves looked on from across the street.  Kye had Sym down and was doing some good work with his right, when his wife called to him, “Now, Kye Mayabb, you come right away from there before you get into trouble.”  Whereupon the valiant better half of him who was being beaten to death called out cheerily, “Don’t let him scare you, Sym!” The boys made it up afterward, but our little street was quite lively for a time.’

“Now as to that,” went on Mrs. Potts, affecting to deliberate, “could we not better have described that as ‘a disgraceful street brawl’?  And yet I find no word of deprecation.  It is told, indeed, with a regrettable flippancy.  Flippancy, I may note again, mars the following item:  ’They tell a good story of old Sarsius Lambert over at Bethel.  His wife was drowned a couple of weeks ago, and Link Talbot went to break the news to the old man.  “Uncle Sarsh,” says Link, “your wife is drowned.  She fell in at the ford, and an hour later they found her two miles down-stream.”  “Two miles an hour!” said Uncle Sarsius, in astonishment.  “Well, well, she floated down quite lively, didn’t she?"’

“You will pardon me, I trust,” said Mrs. Potts, “if I say it would have been better to speak of the grief-stricken husband and to conclude with a fitting sentiment such as ’the proudest monuments to the sleeping dead are reared in the hearts of the living.’”

“I’ll put it in next week,” ventured Solon, meekly.  “I didn’t think of it at the time.”

“Ah, but one should always think, should one not?” asked Mrs. Potts, almost sweetly.  “By thinking, for example, you could elevate your sheet by eliminating certain misapplied colloquialisms.  Here I read:  ’The rain last week left the streets in a frightful state.  The mud simply won’t jell.’”

Shame mantled the brow of Solon Denney.

“In short,” concluded Mrs. Potts, “I regret to say that your paper is not yet one that I could wish to put into the hands of my little Roscoe.”

Little Roscoe coughed sympathetically and remarked, before he lost his chance for a word:  “The boy of to-day is the man of to-morrow.  Parents cannot be too careful about what their little ones will read during the long winter evenings that will soon be upon us.”  He coughed again when he had finished.

“The press is a mighty lever of civilization,” continued the mother, with an approving glance at her boy, “and you, Mr. Denney, should feel proud indeed of your sacred mission to instruct and elevate these poor people.  Of course I shall have other duties to occupy my time—­”