And the strutting, pompous little man, who referred grandly to "my wife," and then to "the madame," and finally to "my landlady," in a rather elaborate attempt at jocularity, laughed alone at his merriment along this line, and never knew that no one cared for his humour.
So in his early forties Editor Brownwell dried up and grew yellow and began to dye his mustaches and his eyebrows, and to devote much time to considering his own importance.

"Throw it out," said Brownwell to the foreman, "not a line of it shall go!" He had just come home from a trip and had happened to glance over the proof of the article describing the laying of the corner-stone of Ward University.
"But that's the only thing that happened in town this week, and Mrs.
Brownwell wrote it herself." "Cut it out, I say," insisted Brownwell, and then threw back his shoulders and marched to his desk, snapping his eyes, and demonstrating to the printers that he was a man of consequence.

"I'll teach 'em," he roared.

"I'll teach 'em to make up their committees and leave me out." He raged about the office, and finally wrote the name of Philemon R.
Ward in large letters on the office blacklist hanging above his desk.
This list contained the names which under no circumstances were to appear in the paper.

But it was a flexible list.