It was Harwood's habit to spend a day in the towns he visited, gathering local color and collecting anecdotal matter.
While this employment cut deeply into his hours at the law office, he reasoned that there was a compensating advantage in the knowledge he gained on these excursions of the men of both political faiths.
Before the train stopped at Fraserville he saw from the car window the name "Bassett" written large on a towering elevator,--a fact which he noted carefully as offering a suggestion for the introductory line of his sketch.

As he left the station and struck off toward the heart of the town, he was aware that Bassett was a name that appealed to the eye frequently.

The Bassett Block and Bassett's Bank spoke not merely for a material prosperity, rare among the local statesmen he had described in the "Courier," but, judging from the prominence of the name in Fraserville nomenclature, he assumed that it had long been established in the community.

Harwood had not previously faced a second generation in his pursuit of Hoosier celebrities, and he breathed a sigh of relief at the prospect of a variation on the threadbare scenario of early hardship, the little red schoolhouse, patient industry, and the laborious attainment of meagre political honors--which had begun to bore him.
Harwood sought first the editor of the "Fraser County Democrat," who was also the "Courier's" Fraserville correspondent.

Fraserville boasted two other newspapers, the "Republican," which offset the "Democrat" politically, and the "News," an independent afternoon daily whose function was to encourage strife between its weekly contemporaries and boom the commercial interests of the town.