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Page 52
"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."
Mr. Dimmidge's eyes brightened. "I'll take that, too. It's a
little dark-complected for Mrs. P., but it will do. Now roon away,
lad," he said to the foreman, as he quietly pushed him into the
outer office again and closed the door. Then, facing the surprised
editor, he said, "Theer's another notiss I want ye to put in your
paper; but that's atween US. Not a word to THEM," he indicated the
banished foreman with a jerk of his thumb. "Sabe? I want you to
put this in another part o' your paper, quite innocent-like, ye
know." He drew from his pocket a gray wallet, and taking out a
slip of paper read from it gravely, "'If this should meet the eye
of R. B., look out for M. J. D. He is on your track. When this
you see write a line to E. J. D., Elktown Post Office.' I want
this to go in as 'Personal and Private'--sabe?--like them notisses
in the big 'Frisco papers."
"I see," said the editor, laying it aside. "It shall go in the
same issue in another column."
Apparently Mr. Dimmidge expected something more than this reply,
for after a moment's hesitation he said with an odd smile:
"Ye ain't seein' the meanin' o' that, lad?"
"No," said the editor lightly; "but I suppose R. B. does, and it
isn't intended that any one else should."
"Mebbe it is, and mebbe it isn't," said Mr. Dimmidge, with a self-
satisfied air. "I don't mind saying atween us that R. B. is the
man as I've suspicioned as havin' something to do with my wife
goin' away; and ye see, if he writes to E. J. D.--that's my wife's
initials--at Elktown, I'LL get that letter and so make sure."
"But suppose your wife goes there first, or sends?"
"Then I'll ketch her or her messenger. Ye see?"
The editor did not see fit to oppose any argument to this phenomenal
simplicity, and Mr. Dimmidge, after settling his bill with the
foreman, and enjoining the editor to the strictest secrecy regarding
the origin of the "personal notice," took up his gun and departed,
leaving the treasury of the "Clarion" unprecedentedly enriched, and
the editor to his proofs.
The paper duly appeared the next morning with the column
advertisement, the personal notice, and the weighty editorial on
the wagon road. There was a singular demand for the paper, the
edition was speedily exhausted, and the editor was proportionately
flattered, although he was surprised to receive neither praise nor
criticism from his subscribers. Before evening, however, he
learned to his astonishment that the excitement was caused by the
column advertisement. Nobody knew Mr. Dimmidge, nor his domestic
infelicities, and the editor and foreman, being equally in the
dark, took refuge in a mysterious and impressive evasion of all
inquiry. Never since the last San Francisco Vigilance Committee
had the office been so besieged. The editor, foreman, and even the
apprentice, were buttonholed and "treated" at the bar, but 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
any other advertiser in the county," followed by the usual price
list of the merchant's wares. There was an unprecedented demand
for that issue. The reputation of the "Clarion," both as a shrewd
advertising medium and a comic paper, was established at once. For
a few days the editor waited with some apprehension for a
remonstrance from the absent Dimmidge, but none came. Whether Mr.
Dimmidge recognized that this new advertisement gave extra
publicity to his own, or that he was already on the track of the
fugitive, the editor did not know. The few curious citizens who
had, early in the excitement, penetrated the settlement of the
English miners twenty miles away in search of information, found
that Mr. Dimmidge had gone away, and that Mrs. Dimmidge had NEVER
resided there with him!
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