II + 

So did Martin stumble into respectability. + 

In the autumn of 1912, when Mr. Debs, Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Wilson, and Mr. Taft were campaigning for the presidency, when Martin Arrowsmith had lived in Wheatsylvania for a year and a half, Bert Tozer became a Prominent Booster. He returned from the state convention of the Modern Woodmen of America with notions. Several towns had sent boosting delegations to the convention, and the village of Groningen had turned out a motor procession of five cars, each with an enormous pennant, “Groningen for White Men and Black Dirt.” + 

Bert came back clamoring that every motor in town must carry a Wheatsylvania pennant. He had bought thirty of them and they were on sale at the bank at seventy-five cents apiece. This, Bert explained to everyone who came into the bank, was exactly cost-price, which was within eleven cents of the truth. He came galloping at Martin, demanding that he be the first to display a pennant. + 

“I don’t want one of those fool things flopping from my bus,” protested Martin. “What’s the idea, anyway?” + 

“What’s the idea? To advertise your own town, of course!” + 

“What is there to advertise? Do you think you’re going to make strangers believe Wheatsylvania is a metropolis like New York or Jimtown by hanging a dusty rag behind a secondhand tin Lizzie?” + 

“You never did have any patriotism! Let me tell you, Mart, if you don’t put on a banner I’ll see to it that everybody in town notices it!” + 

While the other rickety cars of the village announced to the world, or at least to several square miles of the world, that Wheatsylvania was the “Wonder Town of Central N.D.,” Martin’s clattering Ford went bare; and when his enemy Norblom remarked, “I like to see a fellow have some public spirit and appreciate the place he gets his money outa,” the citizenry nodded and spat, and began to question Martin’s fame as a worker of miracles. + 