refused him. We claim the right to start any rumor of this sort that
will cheer the souls of an admiring constituency. Now is the time to pay
up that subscription."

The intention, of course, was openly playful--a not subtle sally meant
to be read and forgotten. Yet--will it be credited?--more than one of us
read it so hurriedly, perhaps with so passionate a longing to have it
the truth, as not to perceive its satirical indirections. The rumor
actually lived for a day that Potts was to disembarrass the town of his
presence.

And then, from the fictitious stuff of this rumor was spawned a
veritable inspiration. Several of our most public-spirited citizens
seemed to father it simultaneously.

"Why should Potts _not_ leave town--why should he not seek out a new
field of effort?"

"Field of effort" was a rank bit of poesy, it being certain that Potts
would never make an effort worthy of the name in any field whatsoever;
but the sense of it was plain.

Increasingly with the years had plans been devised to alleviate the
condition of Potts's residence among us. Some of these had required a
too definite and artificial abruptness in the mechanics of his removal;
others, like Eustace Eubanks's plot for having all our best people
refuse to notice him, depended upon a sensitiveness in the person aimed
at which he did not possess. Besides, there had been talk of disbarring
him from the practice of his profession, and I, as a lawyer, had been
urged to instigate that proceeding. Unquestionably there was ground for