While this employment cut deeply into his hours at the law office, he
reasoned that there was a compensating advantage in the knowledge he
gained on these excursions of the men of both political faiths.

Before the train stopped at Fraserville he saw from the car window the
name "Bassett" written large on a towering elevator,--a fact which he
noted carefully as offering a suggestion for the introductory line of
his sketch. As he left the station and struck off toward the heart of
the town, he was aware that Bassett was a name that appealed to the eye
frequently. The Bassett Block and Bassett's Bank spoke not merely for a
material prosperity, rare among the local statesmen he had described in
the "Courier," but, judging from the prominence of the name in
Fraserville nomenclature, he assumed that it had long been established
in the community. Harwood had not previously faced a second generation
in his pursuit of Hoosier celebrities, and he breathed a sigh of relief
at the prospect of a variation on the threadbare scenario of early
hardship, the little red schoolhouse, patient industry, and the
laborious attainment of meagre political honors--which had begun to bore
him.

Harwood sought first the editor of the "Fraser County Democrat," who was
also the "Courier's" Fraserville correspondent. Fraserville boasted two
other newspapers, the "Republican," which offset the "Democrat"
politically, and the "News," an independent afternoon daily whose
function was to encourage strife between its weekly contemporaries and
boom the commercial interests of the town. The editor of the "Democrat"
was an extremely stout person, who sprawled at ease in a battered swivel
chair, with his slippered feet thrown across a desk littered with
newspapers, clippings, letters, and manuscript. A file hook was