“There’s no reason why the Clarion should keep on being a dead one, is there?  There’s plenty room for a live daily right here and now, if it was run right.  Why, this town’s blue-molded for a live paper!  Look here:  You go buy the Clarion.  It won’t cost you much.  Believe me, you’ll find it mighty handy—­power of the press, all the usual guff, you know!  I sha’n’t have to worry about obituaries, but I bet you dollars to doughnuts some people will wake up some morning worrying a whole lot about editorials.  Mayne—­people like to think they think what they think themselves.  They don’t.  They think what their home newspapers tell them to think.  And this is your great big chance to get the town ear and shout into it good and loud.”

A week or so later Mayne & Son surprised Appleboro by purchasing the moribund Clarion.  They didn’t have to go into debt for it, either.  They got it for an absurdly low sum, although folks said, with sniffs, that anything paid for that rag was too much.

“Nevertheless,” said the Butterfly Man to me, complacently, “that’s the little jimmy that’s going to grow up and crack some fat cribs.  Watch it grow!”

I watched; but, like most others, I was rather doubtful.  It was true that the Clarion immediately showed signs of reviving life.  And that Jim Dabney, a college friend from upstate, whom Laurence had induced to accept the rather precarious position of editor and manager, wrote pleasantly as well as pungently, and so set us all to talking.

I suppose it was because it really had something to say, and that something very pertinent to our local interests and affairs, that we learned and liked to quote the Clarion.  It made a neat appearance in new black type, and this pleased us.  It had, too, a newer, clearer, louder note, which made itself heard over the whole county.  The county merchants and farmers began once more to advertise in its pages, as John Flint, who watched it jealously—­feeling responsible for Laurence’s purchase of it—­was happy to point out.

One thing, too, became more and more evident.  The women were behind the Clarion in a solid phalanx.  They knew it meant for them a voice which spoke articulately and publicly, an insistent voice which must be answered.  It noticed every Mothers’ Meeting, Dorcas activity, Ladies’ Aid, Altar Guild, temperance gathering; spoke respectfully of the suffragists and hopefully of the “public-spirited women” of the new Civic League.  And never, never, never omitted nor misplaced nor misspelled a name!  The boy from up-state saw to that.  He was wily as the serpent and simple as the dove.  Over the local page appeared daily: 

          “LET’S GET TOGETHER!”

After awhile we took him at his word and tried to ... and things began to happen in Appleboro.

“Here,” said the Butterfly Man to me, “is where the bluejay begins to get his.”