In early summer began a “campaign of boosting.”  The Commercial Club decided that Gopher Prairie was not only a wheat-center but also the perfect site for factories, summer cottages, and state institutions.  In charge of the campaign was Mr. James Blausser, who had recently come to town to speculate in land.  Mr. Blausser was known as a Hustler.  He liked to be called Honest Jim.  He was a bulky, gauche, noisy, humorous man, with narrow eyes, a rustic complexion, large red hands, and brilliant clothes.  He was attentive to all women.  He was the first man in town who had not been sensitive enough to feel Carol’s aloofness.  He put his arm about her shoulder while he condescended to Kennicott, “Nice lil wifey, I’ll say, doc,” and when she answered, not warmly, “Thank you very much for the imprimatur,” he blew on her neck, and did not know that he had been insulted.

He was a layer-on of hands.  He never came to the house without trying to paw her.  He touched her arm, let his fist brush her side.  She hated the man, and she was afraid of him.  She wondered if he had heard of Erik, and was taking advantage.  She spoke ill of him at home and in public places, but Kennicott and the other powers insisted, “Maybe he is kind of a roughneck, but you got to hand it to him; he’s got more git-up-and-git than any fellow that ever hit this burg.  And he’s pretty cute, too.  Hear what he said to old Ezra?  Chucked him in the ribs and said, ’Say, boy, what do you want to go to Denver for?  Wait ’ll I get time and I’ll move the mountains here.  Any mountain will be tickled to death to locate here once we get the White Way in!’”

The town welcomed Mr. Blausser as fully as Carol snubbed him.  He was the guest of honor at the Commercial Club Banquet at the Minniemashie House, an occasion for menus printed in gold (but injudiciously proof-read), for free cigars, soft damp slabs of Lake Superior whitefish served as fillet of sole, drenched cigar-ashes gradually filling the saucers of coffee cups, and oratorical references to Pep, Punch, Go, Vigor, Enterprise, Red Blood, He-Men, Fair Women, God’s Country, James J. Hill, the Blue Sky, the Green Fields, the Bountiful Harvest, Increasing Population, Fair Return on Investments, Alien Agitators Who Threaten the Security of Our Institutions, the Hearthstone the Foundation of the State, Senator Knute Nelson, One Hundred Per Cent.  Americanism, and Pointing with Pride.

Harry Haydock, as chairman, introduced Honest Jim Blausser.  “And I am proud to say, my fellow citizens, that in his brief stay here Mr. Blausser has become my warm personal friend as well as my fellow booster, and I advise you all to very carefully attend to the hints of a man who knows how to achieve.”

Mr. Blausser reared up like an elephant with a camel’s neck—­red faced, red eyed, heavy fisted, slightly belching—­a born leader, divinely intended to be a congressman but deflected to the more lucrative honors of real-estate.  He smiled on his warm personal friends and fellow boosters, and boomed: