“Eliza Jane Dimmidge.”

“Good,” continued the editor, scribbling on the paper before him; “something like this will do:  ’Whereas my wife, Eliza Jane Dimmidge, having left my bed and board without just cause or provocation, this is to give notice that I shall not be responsible for any debts of her contracting on or after this date.’”

“Ye must be a lawyer,” said Mr. Dimmidge admiringly.

It was an old enough form of advertisement, and the remark showed incontestably that Mr. Dimmidge was not a native; but the editor smiled patronizingly and went on:  “’And I further give notice that if she does not return within the period of four weeks from this date, I shall take such proceedings for relief as the law affords.’”

“Coom, lad, I didn’t say that.”

“But you said you wouldn’t take her back.”

“Ay.”

“And you can’t prevent her without legal proceedings.  She’s your wife.  But you needn’t take proceedings, you know.  It’s only a warning.”

Mr. Dimmidge nodded approvingly.  “That’s so.”

“You’ll want it published for four weeks, until date?” asked the editor.

“Mebbe longer, lad.”

The editor wrote “till forbid” in the margin of the paper and smiled.

“How big will it be?” said Mr. Dimmidge.

The editor took up a copy of the “Clarion” and indicated about an inch of space.  Mr. Dimmidge’s face fell.

“I want it bigger,—­in large letters, like a play-card,” he said.  “That’s no good for a warning.”

“You can have half a column or a whole column if you like,” said the editor airily.

“I’ll take a whole one,” said Mr. Dimmidge simply.

The editor laughed.  “Why! it would cost you a hundred dollars.”

“I’ll take it,” repeated Mr. Dimmidge.

“But,” said the editor gravely, “the same notice in a small space will serve your purpose and be quite legal.”

“Never you mind that, lad!  It’s the looks of the thing I’m arter, and not the expense.  I’ll take that column.”

The editor called in the foreman and showed him the copy.  “Can you display that so as to fill a column?”

The foreman grasped the situation promptly.  It would be big business for the paper.  “Yes,” he said meditatively, “that bold-faced election type will do it.”

Mr. Dimmidge’s face brightened.  The expression “bold-faced” pleased him.  “That’s it!  I told you.  I want to bill her in a portion of the paper.”

“I might put in a cut,” said the foreman suggestively; “something like this.”  He took a venerable woodcut from the case.  I grieve to say it was one which, until the middle of the present century, was common enough in the newspaper offices in the Southwest.  It showed the running figure of a negro woman carrying her personal property in a knotted handkerchief slung from a stick over her shoulder, and was supposed to represent “a fugitive slave.”