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We had a bit of difference, that ain't here nor there, but she skedaddled outer my house. I want to give her fair warning, and let her know I ain't payin' any debts o' hers arter this notiss, and I ain't takin' her back arter four weeks from date." "I see," said the editor glibly. "What's your wife's name?" "Eliza Jane Dimmidge."
Dimmidge had selected to personify his wife flashed upon the editor with a new meaning. Yet perhaps she had not seen it, and had only read a copy of the advertisement. What could she want? The "Calaveras Clarion," although a "Palladium" and a "Sentinel upon the Heights of Freedom" in reference to wagon roads, was not a redresser of domestic wrongs, except through its advertising columns!
"When I tell you I've come three thousand miles from Kansas straight here without stopping, ye kin reckon it's so," she replied firmly. "Three thousand miles!" echoed the editor wonderingly. "Yes. Three thousand miles from my own folks' home in Kansas, where six years ago I married Mr. Dimmidge, a British furriner as could scarcely make himself understood in any Christian language!
"I don't remember to have had the pleasure of seeing you in Calaveras before," said the editor tentatively. "No. I never was here before," she said composedly, "but you've heard enough of me, I reckon. I'm Mrs. Dimmidge." She threw one hand over the back of the chair, and with the other tapped her riding-whip on the floor. The editor started. Mrs. Dimmidge! Then she was not a myth.
"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.
"And that ain't all," said Mrs. Dimmidge, with a sly glance at her spouse, "for I found out from that 'Personal' you showed me that this particular old fool was actooally jealous! "And then?" said the editor impatiently. "And then I KNEW he loved me all the time." Even to the eye of the most inexperienced traveler there was no doubt that Buena Vista was a "played-out" mining camp.
Still a little sore from his past experience, he was about to address them abruptly, when he was utterly vanquished by the hearty pressure of their hands and the unmistakable look of gratitude in their eyes. "I was just saying to 'Lizy Jane," began Mr. Dimmidge breathlessly, "if I could only meet that young man o' the 'Clarion' what brought us together again"
"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.
If they had doubted MR. Dimmidge, they utterly rejected MRS. Dimmidge as an advertiser! It was a stale joke that nobody would follow up; and on the heels of this came a letter from the editor-in-chief. MY DEAR BOY, You meant well, I know, but the second Dimmidge "ad" was a mistake.
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! Six weeks passed. The limit of Mr.
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