I considered that the company
would have given up at least five hundred more to avoid being sued for
the death of a man who had been able to evoke those letters; but I did
not say so, for the case was Truman's and eight hundred dollars were
many. Westley Keyts thought they were, indeed, a great many, and
outrageously excessive as a cold money valuation of Potts. "She only got
eight hundred dollars, but there's them that thinks she skinned the
company at _that!_" said Westley.
But there was no disposition to begrudge the widow a single dollar of
this modest sum. A jury of Little Arcadians would have multiplied it
tenfold without a blush; for, while that little hoard endured, any
citizen, however public spirited, could flavor with a certain grace his
refusal to subscribe for a book.
To Solon Denney the thing came as a deep and divine relief. In the
satisfaction induced by it, he penned an obituary of Potts in which he
employed the phrase "grim messenger of death" very cleverly indeed. For
matters had been going from bad to worse. Murmurs at the demands of Mrs.
Potts--likened by Asa Bundy to a daughter of the horse leech--had become
passionately loud as our masses toiled expensively up that Potts-defined
path of enlightenment.
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