to no effect.  All that could be learned was that it was a bona fide advertisement, for which one hundred dollars had been received!  There were great discussions and conflicting theories as to whether the value of the wife, or the husband’s anxiety to get rid of her, justified the enormous expense and ostentatious display.  She was supposed to be an exceedingly beautiful woman by some, by others a perfect Sycorax; in one breath Mr. Dimmidge was a weak, uxorious spouse, wasting his substance on a creature who did not care for him, and in another a maddened, distracted, henpecked man, content to purchase peace and rest at any price.  Certainly, never was advertisement more effective in its publicity, or cheaper in proportion to the circulation it commanded.  It was copied throughout the whole Pacific slope; mighty San Francisco papers described its size and setting under the attractive headline, “How they Advertise a Wife in the Mountains!” It reappeared in the Eastern journals, under the title of “Whimsicalities of the Western Press.”  It was believed to have crossed to England as a specimen of “Transatlantic Savagery.”  The real editor of the “Clarion” awoke one morning, in San Francisco, to find his paper famous.  Its advertising columns were eagerly sought for; he at once advanced the rates.  People bought successive issues to gaze upon this monumental record of extravagance.  A singular idea, which, however, brought further fortune to the paper, was advanced by an astute critic at the Eureka Saloon.  “My opinion, gentlemen, is that the whole blamed thing is a bluff!  There ain’t no Mr. Dimmidge; there ain’t no Mrs. Dimmidge; there ain’t no desertion!  The whole rotten thing is an advertisement o’ suthin’!  Ye’ll find afore ye get through with it that that there wife won’t come back until that blamed husband buys Somebody’s Soap, or treats her to Somebody’s particular Starch or Patent Medicine!  Ye jest watch and see!” The idea was startling, and seized upon the mercantile mind.  The principal merchant of the town, and purveyor to the mining settlements beyond, appeared the next morning at the office of the “Clarion.”  “Ye wouldn’t mind puttin’ this ‘ad’ in a column alongside o’ the Dimmidge one, would ye?” The young editor glanced at it, and then, with a serpent-like sagacity, veiled, however, by the suavity of the dove, pointed out that the original advertiser might think it called his bona fides into question and withdraw his advertisement.  “But if we secured you by an offer of double the amount per column?” urged the merchant.  “That,” responded the locum tenens, “was for the actual editor and proprietor in San Francisco to determine.  He would telegraph.”  He did so.  The response was, “Put it in.”  Whereupon in the next issue, side by side with Mr. Dimmidge’s protracted warning, appeared a column with the announcement, in large letters, “We haven’t lost any wife, but we are prepared to furnish the following goods at a lower rate than