“All the replies I have received so far have been regrets,” murmured Mr. Tate, sorrowfully.  “I took the greatest names first.  I was ambitious for our dear town, Captain.  I went directly to the highest founts.  Perhaps I looked too high.  They have all sent regrets.  I have to confess that I have not yet secured the orator of the day nor any of the other speakers.  But I was ambitious to get the best.”

“Well, that’s the first good news I’ve heard since we started on this lunatic fandango,” said the Cap’n, with soulful thanksgiving.  “Do you think there’s any in this last mess that ’ll be li’ble to come if they’re asked?”

“I have been gradually working down the scale of greatness, but I’m afraid I have still aimed too high,” confessed Mr. Tate.  “Yet the effort is not lost by any means.”  His eyes kindled.  “All my life, Captain Sproul, I have been eager for the autographs of great men—­that I might gaze upon the spot of paper where their mighty hands have rested to write.  I have succeeded beyond my fondest dreams.  I have a collection of autograph letters that make my heart swell with pride.”

“So that’s how you’ve been spendin’ the money of this town—­writin’ to folks that you knew wouldn’t come, so as to get their autographs?”

He touched the point better than he realized.  Poet Tate’s face grew paler.  After his first batch of letters had brought those returns from the regretful great he had been recklessly scattering invitations from the Atlantic to the Pacific—­appealing invitations done in his best style, and sanctioned by the aegis of a committee headed by “Captain Sproul, Chairman.”  Such unbroken array of declinations heartened him in his quest, and he was reaping his halcyon harvest as rapidly as he could.

“I was going to put them on exhibition at the centennial, and make them the great feature of the day,” mumbled the poet, apologetically.

“So do!  So do!” advised the Cap’n with bitter irony.  “I can see a ramjam rush of the people away from the tub-squirt, right in the middle of it, to look at them autographs.  I can see ’em askin’ the band to stop playin’ so that they can stand and meditate on them letters.  It’ll bust up the hoss-trot.  Folks won’t want to get away from them letters long enough to go down to the track.  I wish I’d ‘a’ knowed this sooner, Pote Tate.  Take them letters and your pome, and we wouldn’t need to be spendin’ money and foolin’ it away on the other kind of a programmy we’ve got up!  Them Merino rams from Vienny, Canaan, and surroundin’ towns that ’ll come in here full of hell and hard cider will jest love to set down with you and study autographs all day!”

Mr. Tate flushed under the satire by which the Cap’n was expressing his general disgust at Smyrna’s expensive attempt to celebrate.  He exhibited a bit of spirit for the first time in their intercourse.

“The literary exercises ought to be the grand feature of the day, sir!  Can a horse-trot or a firemen’s muster call attention to the progress of a hundred years?  I fear Smyrna is forgetting the main point of the celebration.”