HOMEBURG MEMORIES

[Illustration: Finally the bass catches up with the cornets. 

FRONTISPIECE. _See Page 176_]

Homeburg Memories

BY

GEORGE FITCHAUTHOR OF "AT GOOD OLD SIWASH, ""SIZING UP UNCLE SAM, " ETC. 

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BYIRMA DÉRÈMEAUX

[Illustration: Publisher's logo]

BOSTONLITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY1915

_Copyright, 1915_, BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 

_All rights reserved_

Published, February, 1915

THE COLONIAL PRESSC. H. SIMONDS CO. , BOSTON, U. S. A. 

TO

_MY FATHER_

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

 I. THE 4:11 TRAIN 1

 II. THE FRIENDLY FIRE-FIEND 26

 III. HOMEBURG'S TWO FOUR-HUNDREDTHS 47

 IV. THE SERVANT QUESTION IN HOMEBURG 71

 V. HOMEBURG'S LEISURE CLASS 91

 VI. HOMEBURG'S WORST ENEMY 116

 VII. THE HOMEBURG WEEKLY DEMOCRAT 142

VIII. THE HOMEBURG MARINE BAND 171

 IX. THE AUTO GAME IN HOMEBURG 200

 X. THE HOMEBURG TELEPHONE EXCHANGE 230

 XI. A HOMEBURG SCHOOL ELECTION 254

 XII. CHRISTMAS AT HOMEBURG 278

ILLUSTRATIONS

FINALLY THE BASS CATCHES UP WITH THECORNETS _Frontispiece_

IT SEEMED TO ME THEN AS IF SHE MUSTHAVE COME FROM HEAVEN BY AIR-LINE PAGE 18

"SHE'S OUT, BOYS, " HE SAYS " 148

IN HOMEBURG YOU COME HOME TO THEWHOLE TOWN " 284

Homeburg Memories

I

THE 4:11 TRAIN

_In Which the World Comes Once a Day to Visit Homeburg_

Hel-lo, Jim! Darn your case-hardened old hide, but I'm glad to see you!Wait till I unclamp my fingers from this suit case handle and I'll shakehands. Whoa--look out!! That's the fourth time that chap's tried to tagme with his automobile baggage truck. He'll get me yet. I wish I were atrunk, Jim. Why aren't they as kind to the poor traveler as they are tohis trunk? I don't see any electric truck here to haul me the rest ofthe way into New York. It's a long, long walk to the front door of thisstation, and my feet hurt. 

That's the idea. Let the porter lug that suit case. I'd have hired onemyself, but I was afraid I couldn't support him in the style you fellowshave made him accustomed to. It was mighty nice of you to come down andmeet me, Jim. I've been standing here for five minutes in this infernalmass meeting of locomotives, trying to keep out from underfoot, andgetting myself all calm and collected before I surged out of thishowling forty-acre depot and looked New York in the eye. It's nothingbut a plain case of rattles. I have 'em whenever I land here, Jim. Dumpme out on Broadway and I wouldn't care, but whenever I land back in thebowels of a Union Station I'm a meek little country cousin, and I alwayswant some one to come along and take me by the hand. 

It's the fault of your depots. They're the biggest things you have, andit isn't fair for you to come at me with your biggest things first. Every time I start for New York I swear to myself that I'm going to gointo a fifty thousand dollar dining-room full of waiters far above mystation, and tuck my napkin in my collar, just to show I'm a free-borncitizen; and I'm going to trust my life to crossing policemen, and go byforty-story buildings without even flipping an eye up the corner andcounting the stories by threes. I'm mighty sophisticated until I hit thecity and get out into a depot which has a town square under roof and awaiting-room so high that they have to shut the front door to keep thethunder storms out. Then I begin to shrink. And by the time I've walkedfrom Yonkers or thereabouts, clean through the station and out of atwo-block hallway, with more stores on either side than there are in allHomeburg, and have committed my soul to the nearest taxicab pirate, Ifeel like a cheese mite in the great hall of Karnak. 

No, sir; when I get into a big city depot, I'm a country Jake, and Ineed a compass and kind words. I've suffered a lot from those depots. Imissed a train in Washington once because I figured it would take meonly ten minutes to go from my hotel to the train. But I counted onlythe distance to the front door of the Union Station. By the time I'djourneyed on through the fool thing, my train had gone. Once I missed atrain in the Boston station because I didn't know which one of thethirty tracks my train was on. I guessed it was somewhere to the right, and I guessed wrong. It was twenty-four tracks away to the left, and Icouldn't get back in time. So I went into their waiting-room, which isas big as a New England cornfield and has all the benches named forvarious towns. I had to stand up two hours because I couldn't find theHomeburg bench. 

I'm an admirer of big cities, Jim, and I wouldn't have you take a footoff your Woolworth building, or a single crashity!! bang!! out of yoursubways, but I wish there was a little more coziness in your depots. Why, at Homeburg I'm nearer the train at my house than I am in New Yorkafter I've got to the station. It's great to have a depot so big that ittakes the place of mountain scenery, but it's hard on the poor traveler, even if it does have all the comforts of away-from-home in it. And thenit swallows up things so. It takes away all the pleasure of having arailroad in the town. I suppose five hundred trains come into thisstation every day, but they're just trains--nothing more. You don't getany fun or information or excitement out of them. You can't even chasethem--they bang a gate in your face when you try. I'll bet you don't getas much comfort and fun out of all these five hundred trains, Jim, as wedo out of the 4:11 train at Homeburg. 

No; it's not any better than your trains. It's not as good. You can'tget raw oysters and magazines and individual cocktails and shaves on it. All you can get is cinders and peanuts, and I would advise you, if youwere hungry, to eat the former and put the latter in your eye. It's thekind of a train you New Yorkers would ride on and then write hometelling about the horrors of travel in the great West. But it meanseverything to Homeburg. It means a lot more than the half dozen limitedtrains which roar through our town fifty miles an hour every day andhave made us so expert at dodging that we will develop kangaroo legs inanother generation. It's our train. Here in New York a hundred trainscome in each morning from Chicago, New Orleans, Everywhere and pointsbeyond, and the office-boy next door to the depot doesn't stop lickingstamps long enough to look up. But when old Number Eleven, which is itsofficial railroad name, pulls into Homeburg from Chicago eachafternoon, loaded with mail, news, passengers, home-comers, adventurers, mysterious strangers, friends, brides, heroes, widows and coffins, youcan just bet we're there to see her. 

It's the town pastime. We all do it. Whenever a Homeburg man has nothingelse to do at four o'clock, he steps over to the depot and joins thelong line which leans up against the depot wall and keeps it in placeduring the crisis. Some of them haven't missed a roll-call in years. OldBill Dorgan, the drayman, has stood on the platform every day since theline was built, rain or shine. Josh James, the colored porter of theCosmopolitan Hotel, knows more traveling men than William J. Bryan. Ifhe was absent from his post, the engineer wouldn't know where to stopthe train. The old men come crawling down on nice days and sunthemselves for an hour before the train arrives. The boys sneak slylydown on their way from school and stand in flocks worshiping the trainbutcher, who is bigger than the Washington Monument to them. Sometimes afew girls come down too, and hang around, giggling. But that doesn'tlast long. We won't stand for it in our town. Some missionary tells thegirls' parents, and then they suddenly disappear from the ranks and lookpouty and insulted for a month, and we know, without being told, that acouple of grown-up young ladies of sixteen or more have been spanked inthe good old-fashioned way. Homeburg is a good town, and it makes itsgirls behave even if it has to half kill them. 

You haven't any idea, Jim, how much bustle and noise and excitement andgeneral enthusiasm a passenger train can put into a small town for a fewminutes. Just imagine yourself in Homeburg on a cold winter afternoon. It's four o'clock. The sun has stood the climate as long as it can andis getting ready to duck for shelter behind the dreary fields to thewest. If you ran an automobile a mile a minute down the walk on MainStreet you wouldn't have to toot for a soul. Now and then a farmer comesout of a store, takes a half hitch on the muffler around his neck, putson his bearskin gloves and unties his rig. You watch him drive off, thewheels yelling on the hard snow, and wonder if it isn't more cheerfulout in the frozen country with the corn shocks for company. It's theterrible half hour of bleak, fading light before the electricity isturned on and the cozy dark comes down--the loneliest hour of thewinter's day. 

You've stood it about as long as you can, when you notice signs of lifeacross the street. Three men carrying satchels are steering for thedepot. Dorgan's dray is rattling down the street. Dorgan's dray wouldmake a cheerful noise if it was the last sound on earth. Little flocksand groups of people begin plodding across the square. You know themall. Gibb Ogle is going over to watch the baggageman load trunks. It isGibb's life work. Pelty Amthorne is a little late, but he'll have timeto arrange himself against the east end door and answer the roll-call, as he has for thirty years. Miss Ollie Mingle is going over too. Shemust be expecting that Paynesville young man again. If the competitionbetween her and Ri Hawkes gets any keener, Ollie will have to meet thetrain down at the crossing and nab the young man there. Sim Atkinson istaking a handful of letters down to the station as usual. Ever since hehad his row with Postmaster Flint, he has refused to add to the receiptsof the office, and buys his stamps of the mail clerk. It is Sim's hopeand dream that sometime the annual receipts of the Homeburg post-officewill just miss being enough to bring a raise in salary. Then Sim willbring it to Flint's attention that he would have bought his tendollars' worth of stamps that year at home, if Flint hadn't advertisedhis lock box for rent when he neglected the quarterly dues. Watching Simthirst for revenge is as much fun as having a real Indian in town. 

There's the headlight half a mile down the track! She's coming fast, tenminutes late, and, because you've been lonesome all afternoon and needexercise, you slip into your coat and hustle down. Just as you get tothe depot, Number Eleven comes in with a crash and a roar, bell ringing, steam popping off, every brake yelling, platforms loaded, expectationintense, confusion terrific, all nerves a-tingle, and fat old Jack Ball, the conductor, lantern under arm, sweeping majestically by on the bottomstep of the smoker. Young Red Nolan and Barney Gastit, two of thestation agent's innumerable amateur helpers, race for the baggage carwith their truck, making a terrible uproar over the old planks. The mailclerk dumps the sacks. Usually he gets a stranger in the shin withthem. Nothing doing to-day. Just missed a traveling man. We still tellof the time the paper sack scooted across the icy platform and stoodMayor Andrews on his head. He wanted to abolish the whole post-officedepartment. 

I've always realized what the city gate must have meant to the medievalloafers, because I've watched Homeburg's city gate at the 4:11 train sooften. There's Mrs. Sim Estabrook getting home. Must have beenunexpected. No one to meet her. Wonder if Sim's sick again. I'll call uppretty soon. Wimble Horn's been to Chicago again, evidently. Wonder ifhe'll dump his last eighty acres into the Board of Trade. Who's thefine-looking duck in the fur-lined coat? Not a transient, evidently. Hepassed Josh by. Must be visiting somebody. Yes; Mrs. Ackley's kissinghim. That might mean a scandal in New York, but at home it meansrelatives. Poor old Jedson Bane's back, I see. Looks pretty bad. Hospital didn't help him. Guess he's not long for us. Hello, Jed, oldman! How are you? Better? That's fine. You're looking great! For thelove of Mike, will you take a swift look at what's got off? I believeit's from college. They don't wear clothes like that anywhere else. Oh, yes, of course, that's why the Singers' automobile came down. Don't knowwhat we'd do, now that the circus has passed us up, if it wasn't forSally Singer. She imports a new specimen from the University about everytwo weeks. 

The crowd is off, and you hurl a few good-bys at the travelers gettingon. Our two editors check them off as they go. The _Argus_ and the_Democrat_ get all their news at this train. There's no slipping in andout of town in Homeburg. One and all we face the gantlet. Young AndyLowes hates to have us beg him not to miss the morning train back, as wedo three times a week; but he simply has to go to Jonesville thatoften, and we all know why, and he knows we know. The Parsons are rid oftheir Aunt Mary at last. She's worse than an oyster. Put her in aguest-room and she grows fast to it. They've had her for six months now. Hello! Peter Link's son is going down to Jonesville. Guess he's got hisjob back. Andy would be a good boy if he would only stop trying to makethe distilleries work nights. There goes old Colonel Ackley on hisweekly trip. Wonder if he thinks he fools any one with that suit case. Ever since the town went dry, he's had business in the next county. Hello, Colonel! Don't drop that case. You'll break a suit of clothes!Watch him glare. 

The engine has gotten its breath by this time. Ever notice how human anengine sounds when it stops after a long run and the air-brake apparatusbegins to pant? Old Ball has been fussing for a minute and now he yells"'Board. " Aunt Emma Newcomb gets in a few more kisses all around herfamily. She's going down to the next station. The engine gives a fewloud puffs, spins its wheels a few times, and the cars begin movingpast. Hurrah! Something doing to-day. That grocery salesman who getshere once a week is coming across the square two jumps to a rod. Go it, old man! Go it, train! Ball will always stop for a woman, but thedrummers have to take her on the fly. There! He's on--all but his hat. Red Nolan will keep that for him till his next trip. 

She's moving fast now. The brakeman hops the next to the last car withgrace and carelessness. From every platform devoted friends andrelatives are spilling--it is a point of honor in Homeburg to remainwith your loved ones in the car as long as you dare before leaping forlife. The last car sweeps by. The red and green lights begin to growsmaller with businesslike promptness. There is a parting clatter as thetrain hits the last switch frog two blocks away. Then it's over. Thenoise, bustle, confusion, and joyful excitement follow the flyingcinders out of town, and silence resumes its reign. I've never heardanything so still as Homeburg after the 4:11 has pulled out. 

But we're too busy to notice it as we string across the square to thepost-office. We have the day's cargo to digest. We have to wait for theevening mail to be distributed, read the evening newspapers, shake handswith all the returned Homeburgers, size up the brand new Homeburgers andinvestigate the strangers. And it keeps us busy until supper time. 

I've lived in Homeburg thirty-five years and more, and the 4:11 trainhas been tangled up in my biography all the way. I remember the firsttime I ever rode on it. The cars were funny-looking coops then, and theengine had a sixty-gallon smokestack. I was four, and I yelled withfear when the train came in and kept it up for the first twenty milesafter they lugged me on board. The conductor chucked me under the chinand gave me his punch to play with. He was a young man then. He'dcarried my father and mother on their wedding journey, and twenty yearsafter that first ride of mine he carried me and my wife on our weddingjourney. The other day we gave our oldest girl two dollars and sent heron her first trip down to Jonesville, by herself. Old Ball was on thetrain, and he grinned at me and promised to take good care of her. He'spretty gray now, but I hope he stays long enough to start anothergeneration of our family on its travels. 

I went to my first circus, to Jonesville, on old Number Eleven. And Iwent down there at sixteen, a member of the Republican Club, with atorch, and the proudest boy in the State. The next year I started tocollege with an algebra and a tennis racket under my arm (they wouldn'tjam into the trunk), and a dozen friends came down to see me off. OnNumber Eleven that day I met four other boys going to the same school. We are still close chums, though one is on the coast, another's here inNew York, and the third is in the Philippines. 

[Illustration: It seemed to me then as if she must have come from heavenby air-line. ]

It was the next year that I noticed a girl as she stepped off of NumberEleven and was met by one of the Homeburg girls. I didn't know who shewas, but it seemed to me then as if she must have come from heaven byair-line, and I felt so friendly toward the girl who met her that I hadto go down to her house to call that very night. The visitor had come tostay--her father was starting a new store in Homeburg. I'll tell you, when a snorty old train, which assays two pecks of cinders per car, hauls the most wonderful girl on earth into your town and dumps herinto your arms--so to speak, and bunching up events a little--you'rebound to love that train. 

I could write the history of Homeburg from the 4:11 too. In fact, thetrain has hauled most of Homeburg into the town. Year after year wewatch strangers get off the train and turn around three times, in theway a stranger does when he tries to orient himself and locate thenearest hotel. We get acquainted with those strangers, and in the nextweek we discover their business and antecedents and politics andpreferences in jokes, and whether they pull for the Chicago Cubs or theWhite Sox. In two weeks they are old-time citizens and go down with usto welcome the newcomers. Henry Broar came to us on the 4:11. I rememberhe wore a loppy hat and needed a shave that day, and we didn't assesshim very highly. But he had a whacking law practice inside of a year, ran for county judge two years later, and now we swell up to the dangerpoint when people mention Congressman Broar, and let it slip modestlythat we are intimate enough with Hank to trade shirts with him. 

I remember well the day two imposing strangers got off of Number Eleven, and made the town nearly explode with curiosity by walking out to theDover farm at the edge of town and pacing it off this way and that. Tookus a month to learn their business. That was the time we got the ScraperWorks. When Allison B. Unk arrived, he made a tremendous impression bywearing a plug hat still in its first youth, and rolling ponderouslyaround town in a Prince Albert. We've despised Prince Alberts ever sincebecause the town fell for that one and deposited liberally in Unk's newbank, which closed up a year later. And then there was the time when thetrainmen put off a scared and sick cripple, who lay in the depotwaiting-room with a ring of sympathetic incompetents around him untilDoc Simms could help him. He touched our hearts, and we shelled outenough to send him on a hundred miles to his people. He came back tenyears later and kept Homeburg balanced magnificently in the air for aweek by showing us how much fun it is to chum with a millionaire. Evensick cripples are likely to guess the market right in this country, youknow, and he never forgot us. 

As they come in on Number Eleven, so they go. The young men come toHomeburg full of hope, and their sons go on elsewhere loaded with thesame. Mothers weep on the station platform many times a year while theirWillies and Johns and Petes hike gaily off to chase their fortunes. Andmany times a year the old boys come back from Chicago. Some of them arerich and proud, and some of them are rich and friendly, and some of themare just friendly. But they all get off of Number Eleven under ourkeen, discriminating glare, and they all get the same greeting while wesize them up and wonder if their nobby thirty-five dollar suits aretheir sole stocks-in-trade, and just how much a "lucrative position"means in Chicago. 

When the big strike was on, twenty-five years ago, Number Eleven didn'trun for two days. We might as well have been marooned on St. Helena. Itwas awful. When a hand-car came sweeping into town the third day with abig sail on, we hailed it like starving sailors. It was Number Elevenwhich took on a flat-car loaded with Paynesville's fire departmenttwenty years ago and saved our business section. When President Banks, of the Great F. C. & L. Railroad, rolled into Homeburg in his privatecar, to become "Pudge" Banks again for a day or two and revisit thescenes of his boyhood, he came on Number Eleven of course. The trainhung around while the band played two selections and the mayor gave anaddress of welcome. That was her longest visit in Homeburg. 

The old train even bursts into local politics and social affairs now andthen. It managed to jump the track in the campaign of '96, leaving fourdistinguished Democratic speakers, fizzing with oratory, in thecornfields, and ruining the only rally the Dems attempted to pull off. And it took DeLancey Payley down after all the rest of the town hadfailed, in a manner which kept us tearful with delight for a week. DeLancey was sequestered in an Eastern college by his loving parents, and when he was graduated he came home and started an exclusive circlecomposed mostly of himself. He was unapproachably haughty, until one dayhe accompanied a proud beauty, who was visiting the Singers (our otherhothouse family) to Number Eleven, and lingered too long after the trainstarted. DeLancey got off, but in doing so he performed a variety ofdifficult and instructive feats of balancing on his ear which wereviewed by a large audience with terrific enthusiasm. When DeLancey washaughty after that, we always praised this feat, and you'd be surprisedto see how soon he got his nose down out of the zenith. 

Every day old Number Eleven brings in its mail-bag full of hopes andtriumphs, of good news, bad news, and tragedy. Every day it brings thenew ideas from the world outside and the latest wrinkles in hanging onto this whirling old sphere in a pleasant and successful manner. We getour styles from the Chicago men who step off of its platforms and tarrywith us. We send our brides off on it with an entire change of bill ateach performance. We get our peeps into wonderland and romance andcomedy from the theatrical troupes which straggle out of its cars andrush to the baggage car to make sure that no varlet has attached theirtrunks since the last stop. It is the magic carpet which carries ouryouth forth into the great world to wonder and learn and prevail. Andnow and then it is the kindly beast of burden who brings back some oldplaymate, done with weariness and striving, and coming home to rest inour cemetery beyond the south hill. 

No, Jim, your thousand trains a day, with their parlor cars, bathrooms, barber shops and libraries, are all right, but they're just trains. Number Eleven is a whole lot more than a train. It is the world come tovisit us once a day--a moving picture of life which we enjoyed longbefore Edison took out his patent. Do you wonder that it makes me sad tosee so many perfectly good trains going to waste in this roofed-overtownship of yours? Take me out of it, please. 

II

THE FRIENDLY FIRE-FIEND

_The Joys of Fighting Him with a Volunteer Fire Department_

Hello! Here comes the fire department! Watch the people swarm! Uumpp!Ouch! Excuse me for living. This is no place for a peaceable spectator. I'm going to cast anchor in this doorway until the mob gets past. 

No, thank you. I'll not join the Marathon. But you don't know howhomesick and happy it makes me to see this crowd run! I've been in NewYork a week now, and honestly this is almost the first really humanimpulse I've seen a citizen give way to. Until this minute I've felt asif I were a hundred thousand miles from Homeburg, with all trainservice suspended for the winter. If I could find the man who stepped onmy heels while chasing that engine, I'd thank him and ask him whatvolunteer fire department he used to run with. See 'em scramble. 

Whoop! Here comes the hook-and-ladder truck! This is nothing butHomeburg on a big scale. I'm beginning to envy you city chaps now. Thatmakes the fourth engine that's come past. You get more for your moneythan we do. Look at that chief hurdling curbstones in his little redwagon. If Homeburg ever gets big enough to have a chief's wagon, I'llsuffocate with pride. 

I see it's the same old story. Fire's all out. It always is by the timeyou've run nine blocks. Watch the racers coming back. Stung, every oneof them--gold-bricked. There's a fat fellow who's run half a mile, I'llbet. If his tongue hung out any farther, he'd trip up on it. But he'lldo it again next time. They all do. Learning to stop running to fires isas hard as learning to stop buying mining-stock in the West. And it'sjust as big a swindle too. The returns from running to fires aremarvelously small. They tell me that a hundred million dollars a yeargoes up in flames in this country. I don't believe it. If it does, Iwant to know who gets to see all the fun. I don't. 

I've run to fires all my life, until lately, and I've drawn about threehundred and seventy-five blanks. Once I almost saw a big grain-elevatorburn in a Western town. That is, I would have seen it, if I had lookedout of my hotel window. But I'd run two miles to see a burning haystackin the afternoon, and I was so dead tired that I slept right through theperformance that night. And once I did see a row of stores burn, back inHomeburg--at the distance of a mile. I was in school, and the teacherwouldn't dismiss us. By stretching my neck several feet I could just seethe flames leaping over the trees, but that was all. Some of the badboys sneaked out of the door, but I was a good boy, and waited onethousand years until school was out and the fire was ditto. I've neverfelt quite the same since toward either goodness or education. 

Some men run faithfully to fires year after year and view a finecollection of burning beefsteaks and feverish chimneys and volcanicwood-sheds, while others stroll out after dinner in a strange city andspend a pleasant evening watching a burning oil-refinery make a Vesuviuslook pale and sickly in comparison. Luck is distributed in a dastardlyway, and as for myself I've quit trying. I don't run to fires at all anymore. The big cities have fooled me long enough by sending out fortypieces of apparatus to smother a defective flue. I stay behind andwatch the crowd. It's more amusing and not half so much work. 

Of course in Homeburg it's different. You city people don't realize whata blessing the fire-fiend is to a small town. Fires mean a whole lot tous. They keep us from petrifying altogether during the dull seasons. Andthey don't have to be real fires, either. Any old alarm will do. Ourfire-bell sounds just as terrible for a little brush fire as it wouldfor a flaming powder-mill. It's an adventure merely to hear the thing. Take a winter night in the dull season after Christmas, for instance. You have begun to go to sleep right after supper. You've finished thejob at nine o'clock, and by two A. M. You're sailing placidly southwestof Australia in a seagoing automobile. 

Suddenly the pirate-ship in the rear, which you hadn't noticed before, slips up and begins potting away at you with a dull metallic boom. Theauto slips its clutch, and the engine begins to clang and clatter, andsomebody off behind a red-hot mountain in the distance begins ringing anenormous bell just as you slide downward into a crater of flame--andthen you wake up entirely, and the fire-bell is going"clang-clang-clang-clang-clang, " while below you hear the ringing crunchof your neighbor's feet on the cold snow, and outside the north windowthere is a red glare which may be either the end of the world or anotherexploded lamp in 'Bige Brinton's chicken-incubator; you won't know whichuntil you have stabbed both feet into one pants-leg, crawled all overthe cold floor for a missing sock, and run half a mile, double-reefingyour nightshirt to keep it from trailing out from under your overcoat. That's what a fire-alarm means in Homeburg. 

It's just as interesting in the daytime too. Imagine a summer afternoonin Homeburg about three o'clock. It's hotter than a simoon in theSahara, and the aggregate business being done along Front Street isnineteen cents an hour. The nearest approach to life on the street isSam McAtaw sitting in a shady spot on the edge of the sidewalk andleaning against a telephone-pole, sound asleep. You're sitting in youroffice chair, with your feet on the desk, dozing, when suddenly you hearfootsteps outside. Whoever is making them is turning them out with greatrapidity, and that in itself is novel enough to be interesting. Thefootsteps go by, and you look at their maker. It is Gibb Ogle surging upthe walk and yanking his ponderous feet this way and that withtremendous energy. Nothing but a fire or a loose lion can make Gibb run, and you don't take any stock in the lion theory; so you tumble out afterhim. 

By this time Sim Bone is on the street, and Harvey McMuggins is comingup behind, while half a dozen heads have suddenly sprouted from as manydoorways. Your heart beats with suspense when Gibb comes to thetown-hall corner. Hurrah! He's steering for the fire-house. You'reoverhauling him rapidly, and by a big sprint you beat out ClattSanderson, and grab one handle of the fire-bell ropes. Gibb grabs theother, and then you let her have it for all there is in you. 

Did I say anything about Homeburg being asleep? Forget it. Before you'vehit the bell a dozen taps you can't hear it for the tramp of feet. Everystore in town is belching forth proprietors and clerks. They are comingbareheaded and coatless; some of them are collarless. Chief Dobbs, whoshoes horses in his less glorious moments and keeps his helmet hangingon the forge-cover, dashes into the engine-room, grabs his trumpet, andbegins firing orders, not singly, but in broadsides. There's nobodythere to order yet, but he's just getting his hand in, and ten secondslater, when the first member of the company arrives, he is saluted withnineteen stentorian commands in one blast. Half a minute later theengine-house is clogged with fire-fighters, and the air is a maelstromof orders, counter orders, suggestions, objections, and hoarse yells. Then a roar of wheels sounds outside, and you drop the bell-rope handleand go out to see the finest sight of all. 

I suppose those old Romans thought the chariot-races were pretty nifty, but if an old Roman should reassemble himself and watch the dray-race toa Homeburg fire, he'd wonder how he ever managed to sit through a sillylittle dash around an arena. From the south comes a cloud of dust and aterrific racket. At an equal distance from the east comes another cloudof dust and an even more terrible uproar, Clay Billings's dray havingmore loose spokes than Bill Dorgan's. The clouds approach withtremendous speed. Bill is a little ahead. He is lashing his horses withthe ends of the reins, while from the bounding dray small articles of novalue, such as butter-firkins and cases of eggs, are emerging andfollowing on the road behind. 

But Clay isn't beaten--not by a thousand miles. He's going to make it adead heat or better--no, Bill hit the crossing first. By George! ThatClay boy is a wonder. He deliberately pulled in and shot across behindBill, cutting off a good fifty feet. His team stops, sliding on theirhaunches, and ten seconds later is being hitched to the hose-cart, whileClay is on the seat clanging the foot-bell triumphantly. It's thefiftieth race, or thereabouts, between the two, and the score is abouteven. The winner gets two dollars for the use of his team. I've seenhorse-races for a thousand-dollar purse which weren't half as exciting. 

In the meanwhile more messengers have arrived from the fire. It is inthe Mahlon Brown barn, and late advices indicate terrible progress. Asfast as forty-nine rival fingers can do it, the tugs are fastened, andthe cart is off down the street with a long trail of citizens after it. 

Bill's team, badly blown, is hitched to the hook-and-ladder truck, andwilling hands push it out through the door. There is always more or lessof a feud between the hook-and-ladder boys and the hose-cart boys, because the former get the second team and rarely arrive at the fire intime to hoist the beautiful blue ladders before the hose-cart gang putsthe conflagration out. Indeed, the feeling has gotten so strong at timesthat the hook-and-ladder gang has threatened to double the prize-moneyby private subscription and get their rig out first, but patriotism hasthus far prevented this. 

You have rung the bell until you are tired, by this time, and, besides, the human flood has rushed on, leaving no one to whom you can explainjust how you thought you smelled fire and beat the world to theengine-house. So you set out for the fire yourself and jog over thehalf-mile in pretty fair time, considering the heat. It is an impressivesight--not the fire itself, but the event. Two thousand, two hundred andnine people are there--that being the population of Homeburg minus thesick and wandering. 

In the midst of the seething mass are the hose-cart and theladder-truck. Around them dozens of red helmets are bobbing, while thequivering air is cut and slashed and mangled with a very hurricane oforders: "Bring up that hose--" "Whoa, keep that horse still--" "Bringher round this way--" "Bring her round _this_ way--" "Hey, you chumps, the fire's _this_ side--" "Back up that wagon--" "Come ahead with thewagon--" "Get out of here till we get a ladder up--" "Axes here--" "Turnon that water--" "Turn on that water--" "_Turn on that water!!--_""Jones, go down and tell that wooden Indian to turn on that water. ""Hold that water, you--" "_Hold that water!_" "Turn her on, I say. ""Turn her--" "Wow--turn that nozzle the other way--"

And then the water comes with a mighty rush, yanking the nozzlemen thisway and that and sweeping firemen and common citizens aside as if theywere mere straws. 

As a rule, this is the climax, and the end comes rapidly. By this timeBrown, who had put the fire out with a few pails of water before thealarm sounded, has persuaded the department to call off its hose, thebarn being full of valuable hay. So there isn't anything to do. Thewater is turned off. Gibb Ogle explains to the one hundred and eleventhknot of people how he was going past the place when he saw the tongue offlame, and every one disperses after a pleasant social time. 

Everybody is tolerably well satisfied except the hook-and-ladder gang, which, as usual, is skunked again--never got a ladder out. A couple ofthe axmen had a little fun with a rear window, but otherwise the affairis a flat failure. They go back sullenly, but are comforted when theroll is called, when each member who was present draws a dollar from thecity treasury. As usual, Pete Sundbloom is late, and tries to edge in toroll-call, though he was a mile away from peril, but he can't make itstick and gets the hoarse hoot when his little game is discovered. 

I want to ask you--isn't that a pleasant interruption on a dead day? Itmakes life worth living, and I really wonder that there isn't moreincendiarism in small towns throughout the United States. 

Of course all the alarms aren't fizzles. Sometimes we have a real fire, and then the scene defies description. When a fair-sized house burnsdown, Chief Dobbs is so hoarse that he can't talk for a week, and whenthe row of wooden stores on the south side went up in flames a few yearsago, the old chief, Patrick McQuinn, burst a blood-vessel and had toretire, the doctor having warned him that he must never use aspeaking-trumpet again. 

I was away at the time, but they tell me that was a grand fire for thehook-and-ladder boys. They were right in the middle of it, and everyladder in the truck was out. There was some trouble over the fact thatthe big extension ladder was too tall for the buildings, and when ArtSimms had climbed to the top, he managed to fall fifteen feet to theroof of the furniture-store, bruising himself badly. But, on the whole, great good was done, and the second story workers were kings that day. When the hotel caught, and the hook-and-ladder gang got into it, the waythe upper windows belched mattresses, mirrors, toilet-sets, pictures andbeds was unbelievable. Almost everything in the building was saved, andsome of it was successfully repaired afterward. 

The axmen had their innings that day, too. It was a great sight to seeAndy Lowes leap nimbly up the ladder and poke in window after windowwith his spiked ax, stepping backward now and then into nozzlemanJones's face in order to view the effect. The axmen got glory enough tolast for years, and it was an axman who put out the last scrap of fire. Frank Sundell was the hero. He was sitting on the ridge-pole ofEmerson's restaurant when he noticed a few blazing spots on the shingleroof beneath him. He might have called the hose department; but, as Ihave said, there is a good deal of rivalry between the two, and, besides, Sundell had had a slow time that day, Lowes doing most of thedisplay work. So Frank reached cautiously down with his trusty ax, cutout a blazing section of shingles, and tossed it to the ground. Thecrowd cheered, and he was so encouraged that he cut out the rest of thehot spots and put out the fire single-handed. Sundell is one of our verybest firemen and stands in line for a nozzleman's position some day. 

Of course a small-town fire department doesn't get as much practice intwisting the fire-fiend's tail as a city fire company; but our boys havea mighty good record, and we're proud of them. Since we've hadwater-works, and the department hasn't had to depend on some cisternwhich always went dry just at a critical moment, there hasn't been aconflagration in Homeburg big enough to get into the city papers. Theboys may be a little overzealous now and then, but they are always onthe job ten minutes after the first tap of the bell, and the way they goafter a red tongue of flame on a kitchen roof reminds me of a terriershaking a rat. They are our real heroes, --the fire-laddies, --for outsideof Frank Ericson and Shorty McGrew, who work on the switching-crew, andcome sailing down through town hanging gracefully from the end of abox-car ladder by one foot and hand, no one else has any chance to facedanger in Homeburg. 

Of course our firemen don't face danger regularly, between meals, likeyour big paid departments here, and about the most the ordinary businessman gets in the danger-line is the imminent peril of getting a newtwenty-five-dollar suit in line with the chemical hose; but we don'tforget in Homeburg how old Mrs. Agnew's house burned twenty years agothis spring and the department was late, owing to the magnificent depthof Exchange Street, the roads having broken up, and how, when it gotthere, the house was a mass of flames, with the poor old lady, who hadbeen bedridden for years, shrieking inside, and a hundred neighborsshrieking on the outside; and how Pat McQuinn and Henry Aultmeyer dovein through a window, with wet coats around their heads and thechemical-hose playing on their backs; and how they tugged and hauled atMrs. Agnew, who weighed two hundred and fifty pounds, and couldn't get agrip on her, and finally upended the burning bed and dumped her out ofthe window, breaking her hip, and then dumped themselves out and rolledin the wet grass until their hair and mustaches and clothes quitblazing--after which they retired into cotton-wool for a month. 

Maybe your men would have done it more scientifically and entirely savedpoor Mrs. Agnew, who died the next month of the broken hip, but theycouldn't have stuck to the job any more heroically; and when Homeburgcitizens talk about "brave fire-laddies" and "homely heroes" at theannual benefit supper of the Volunteer Company No. 1, they mean Pat andHenry, and are perfectly willing to argue the question with any one. 

So we worship our company to our heart's content, and when it comespacing slowly down the street at the head of every parade, with themembers looking handsomer than chorus girls in their dark-blue flannelsuits, red belts, and neat blue caps, we look at them full of pride andconfidence. Our little boys dream of the time when they will grow up andjoin the company and wear seven-pound red helmets at fires, and comehome tired and muddy in the gray dawn after a fire and demand hot coffeefrom their admiring women-folks; and as for the Homeburg girls--well, the greatest social function of our town, or of the county for thatmatter, is the annual ball of the Homeburg fire department. 

And let me tell you, when the nine-piece orchestra--all hometalent--strikes up the grand march and Chief Dobbs, with his wide-gaugemustache and vacuum-cleaned uniform, leads the company around the hall, every hero with the girl or wife of his heart on his arm and a fullhundred couples of the mere laymen crowding in behind, in a long andmany-looped line, the Astor ball would have to do business with a brassband and a display of fireworks to attract any more enthusiasm. 

That's what the fire department means to us in Homeburg. We don't sufferhalf so much from fires as we would from the lack of them; and when thisnew concrete construction makes the world fire-proof, and the Homeburgfire department rusts away and disappears, we will mourn it even moresincerely than we did the opera house with a real gallery, which gotover-heated one night twenty-five years ago and burned, compelling us toget along with a mere hall with a flat floor ever afterward. 

III

HOMEBURG'S TWO FOUR-HUNDREDTHS

_The Struggles of our Best Families to Impress Us_

Hold on, Jim. Don't hurry so. Remember I don't have a chance to walk upFifth Avenue every day. Give me a chance to astonish myself. Here areten thousand women going by in clothes that would make a lily turn redand burn up with shame, and an equal number of proud gents with curlycuecollars on their overcoats, and I want to do the sight justice. 

You see all this parade every day, but I don't, and I want to drink itall in. See that feminine explosion in salmon plush! That wouldparalyze business back home. Watch that hat crossing the street--itought to be arrested for being without visible means of support--Oh, Isee! There's a girl under it with one of those rifle-barrel skirts. Gee!Ssh, Jim! Did you see the lady who just passed? Let's beg her pardon forintruding on this earth. Say, you could peel enough haughtiness off ofher to supply eight duchesses and still have enough for the lady cashierat my hotel. I'll bet she is one of your Four Hundred. For goodness'sake, Jim, if we pass any of your social lighthouses, point them out tome. I'm here to see the sights. 

I know the rest of the country throws it up to New York a lot because ofits Four Hundred, and that the ordinary small-town man gets so scornfulwhen he talks of the idle and diamond-crusted rich, with theirpoodle-dog pastimes, that he lives in constant danger of stabbing hiseyes with his nose. But I'm not that way; I'm interested. Nothingfascinates me so much as the stories in your papers about Mrs. ClymorrBusst's clever pearl earrings, made to resemble door knobs; and aboutMrs. Spenser Coyne's determination to have Columbia University removedbecause it interferes with the view from her garage; and about littleMrs. Justin Wright's charming innocence in buying a whole steamshipwhenever she goes over to Europe. I'd go a long way to see your FourHundred perform; and moreover, after I had accumulated a precariousbalance on an iron spike fence in order to rest one eye on a genuineduke while he fought his way out of a church with one of your leadinglocal beauties, who had just been affixed to him for life, I would notsquint pityingly on the heaving mass of spectators and hiss:

"We don't do this in Homeburg. "

Because we would do it fast enough if we had a chance. 

We don't have anything like your Smart Set, of course, but I desire tosay with pride that while there aren't enough tiaras in Homeburg to filla pill box, and the only limousine we possess is the closed carriagewhich is used for the family of the deceased at funerals, we have ourexclusive and magnificent class just as New York has. We haven't a FourHundred in Homeburg, but we have a Two Four-Hundredths. If you get asmuch real, solid pleasure and amusement in New York watching your FourHundred as we do watching the Payleys and the Singers, I envy you. They're worth all the trouble they cause. 

For a good many years, Mrs. Wert Payley, wife of the First NationalBank, was our Smart Set, all by herself. There was never any question ofit. She admitted it, and we didn't take the trouble to deny it. In away, she was regarded as a public benefactor. Nobody else cared tospend the money necessary to be a Smart Set, and since Mrs. Payley waswilling to fight and be bled, so to speak, to give our town tone andinject a little excitement into our prairie lives now and then, we feltthat the least we could do was to regard her as a social colossus. 

The Payleys were the only people in Homeburg who had lunch at noon, andas early as 1900 they ate it from the bare table. She was the only womanin Homeburg who could "look in" on an afternoon gabble of any kind for afew minutes and get away with it without insulting the hostess. When sheshook hands with you, you always grabbed in the wrong place, no matterhow much thought you put into it, and while you were readjusting yoursights and clawing for her fingers and perspiring with mortification, she was getting a start on you which kept you bashfully humble as longas she was in sight. She was real goods, Mrs. Payley was--not arrogant, but just naturally superior. People who called at the Payleys' eveningswere the social lights of Homeburg, and whenever some lady wanted todischarge a few fireworks indicating her social position, she would forma hollow square around Mrs. Payley in public and get intimate with herin full view of everybody. Mrs. Payley ran the town, and everybody wascomfortable and content about it until the Singers arrived. 

The Singers came from Cincinnati to cashier in the Farmers' State Bank:Mrs. Singer was city bred and city heeled and when she met Mrs. WertPayley she didn't even blink. She put out her hand a littlenor'-nor'east of her chatelaine watch, when Mrs. Payley put out her handsome four inches southwest by south, and waited calmly for Mrs. Payleyto correct herself. There was an awful moment of suspense, and when itbecame evident that the only way to get Mrs. Singer's hand down to theother level would be to excavate beneath her and change her foundations, Mrs. Payley gave in and reached. 

War was declared that minute, and I shudder now when I think of themonths which followed. 

Mrs. Payley, having been on the ground a long time, had fortified it, ofcourse, and was president of all the clubs. But inside of a month Mrs. Singer flanked her position. She declined to join most of the clubs onthe plea of being a busy woman, and organized a flower mission. Itsobject was to distribute flowers to the sick and needy, who generallyconsisted of Pat Ryan. Pat was nearly smothered in flowers that year, being good-natured, and as the work of collecting said flowers involveda great deal of meeting in the Singer home and dancing in the Singerattic, which was floored with hard maple that winter, Mrs. Singer hadthe girls of the town organized into a Roman phalanx before spring. 

Mrs. Payley was triumphantly reëlected to the presidency of all herclubs that winter, but Mrs. Singer organized a public libraryassociation and pulled off a German. Mrs. Payley attended, and when shetried to patronize Mrs. Singer with her compliments, that cleverinfighter beat her to it by explaining the theory of the German to her. That made Mrs. Payley so mad that the next month she invited the statepresident of the Federation of Women's Clubs to visit her, and didn'task Mrs. Singer to the tea. The next week Mrs. Singer organized aCountry Club. It only consisted of a two-room pavilion in which picnicscould be held and dances could be pulled off, with long intermissionsfor the extraction of slivers from the feet. But it was just as easy totalk about while you were in town and to refer to in a hushed andexclusive manner as if it cost a million, and when Mrs. Payley realizedthat she could never hope to become exclusive enough to get into it, though goodness knows she couldn't have been hired to belong to thefoolish thing, she quit speaking to Mrs. Singer, the split became achasm, and we began choosing up sides in earnest. 

That winter Mrs. Singer seceded from the church which Mrs. Payley ran, and founded an Episcopal church, taking seven choir members out of theCongregational church, to say nothing of the organist. All this mixed upreligion in Homeburg that winter until you could scarcely tell it from award caucus. 

By spring it was dangerous to show favors to either side, and when theschool election came around, it was fought out between the Payley andSinger factions. Sally Singer had been given higher marks than SarahPayley, and the upshot of it all was that when the Payley side prevailedat election by nine votes, the superintendent lost his job. He was agood superintendent and the cause of education didn't get over the joltfor some years, but justice, of course, had to be done. 

The Singers got some satisfaction out of it by electing the school boardtreasurer, which took a lot of money out of the First National Bank. That, of course, got the banks into the row. You city folks may haveyour financial flurries, but if you've never been around and between andunder a bank scrap in a small town, you don't know what trouble is. There were a couple of failures that needn't have happened, and a lot ofpartisan financiering, and then the town rose up and sat down on oursocial leaders with a most pronounced scrunch. We can stand just aboutso much society in Homeburg, but when it gets to elbowing into business, churches, schools and funerals, we are more sensible than youmetropolitans are. It only takes a half-day to pass the word through asmall town, and one fine morning the Payleys and Singers discoveredthat while they were still facing each other like two snorty andinextinguishable generals, their armies had gone off arm in arm. 

That ended the feud and put society in Homeburg back in its properplace--in the front parlors in the evening after the dishes had beendone up. The Payleys and Singers still continued to compete, but wedeclined to fight and bleed for them and amused ourselves instead bywatching them from the sidelines. Mrs. Payley joined the "When I was inEurope" brigade, and the Singers got the first automobile in town. Itkept the Singers so busy supporting and encouraging it, that the Payleyswere able to build the first modern house with a sleeping porch andindividual bathrooms--and about the time the Singers came back with atwo-story bungalow full of chopped wood furniture, Mrs. Payley wentabroad again and began to say: "The last time I was in Europe. " It wasnip and tuck, year in and year out, between the two, and we all enjoyedit a lot. 

But it wasn't until the Payley and Singer children came home fromcollege and formed a tight little circle with their backs out, that webegan to reap the benefits of really haughty society. 

The Payley and Singer children had absorbed all their families had tooffer, and then they went off to school in the East and laid in acomplete stock of the latest styles in superiority. They were allfinished in the same spring and shipped back to Homeburg--magnificentspecimens of college art with even their names done over--and when theyrealized that they had to live forever in the old town, where no onespoke their language or could even understand their clothes, the familyfeud was forgotten and the four rushed together for mutual protectionand formed a real Smart Set. 

It's just like your bigger crowd. It doesn't have anything to do withus in particular. And we are just like you are. You open your Sundaypapers and read reams about the plumbing and pajamas and pet dogs andlove affairs of your first families, and I guess nothing that SallySinger or Sarah Payley ever did got past the scornful but lynx-eyedHomeburgers. When Sarah was getting letters on expensive stationery fromKansas City, the whole town discussed the probable character of a manwho would put blue sealing wax on his envelopes, and when Sally made herpa put an addition on the Singer home, we knew what color she was goingto do her boudoir in three months in advance. But we are prouder thanyour people. You hire down-trodden reporters to go and abase themselvesto get the information, while we wouldn't lower ourselves enough to askeven by proxy. We just let the sewing women and hired girls tell us. 

Being an exclusive set in a small town is a whole lot harder than it isin New York, and I've always admired our youngsters for the way they'vecarried it off. Of course, four people can't form a club or give partiesor support an exclusive restaurant; they can't even be exclusive all bythemselves. They have had to mingle with us, but they are alwayscarefully insulated. They joined our Country Club, but they did it withtheir fingers crossed, so to speak. They always come out together andprotect each other from our rude advances as much as possible. Theyimport college friends whenever they can, and they always have a fewbush leaguers, or utility players, to work in on such occasions. HenrySnyder used to say he could tell when there was need of the peasantry atthe Singer house by the way Sally Singer would suddenly descend from thethird cross-road beyond Mars to the street in front of the post-officeand ask him with an accurately hospitable smile if he couldn't bringhis sister up to the house that evening to meet a few guests. And once ayear all four turn in and give a real dress rehearsal of up-to-datesocial science, to which Homeburg is liberally invited and at whichunknown and unsuspected things are served for refreshments and a new anddeadly variation of bridge or dancing or punch or receiving lines orconversational technique is put on for our inspection and bewilderment. 

We have a show at our opera-house now and then, and we always go tothese affairs largely to see our Smart Set perform. It alwayscomes--even East Lynne is better that West Homeburg--and I'll tell you, by the time they have come rustling in about half way through the firstact, H. DeLancey Payley and W. Sam Singer in clawhammers with an acreapiece of white shirt and holding about four bushels of pink fluff overtheir arms, and the boys have consulted anxiously with the usher, thetwo girls, beautiful visions of Arctic perfection, standing in well-bredsuspense and holding their gowns in the 1915 manner, and all four havehurried down to the best seats and have unharnessed and stowed awaytheir upholsterings, and DeLancey has folded up his explosive hat andSam has leaned back in a lordly way and beckoned to the usher foranother program--by the time all this has transpired, the actors haveforgotten their lines, and we have gotten our money's worth out of theevening's entertainment. 

The hardships those people inflict on themselves in the sacred cause ofcorrectness are agonizing. It takes something more than nerve to wear asilk hat and Prince Albert down to the Homeburg post-office on Sundaysto get the mail--especially with Ad Summers always on hand to spill alarge red laugh into his sleeve and say to some friend in a tremendousstage whisper that the darn dude's legs must be bowed or he wouldn'twant to hide 'em that way. And as for the carriage proposition, I'mcertain that no martyrs have endured more. DeLancey persuaded Hi Nott tobuy a real city carriage, and the four have used it faithfully; only thePayleys and Singers live in different edges of town, and by the time Hihas hauled Sam and his sister across town to the Payleys, throughHomeburg's April streets, which average a little more depth than width, and has hauled the four down to the theater, there are usually aboutthree breakdowns. I've seen the four of them plodding haughtily homefrom "Wedded but No Wife", the girls holding their imported dresses outof the mud, and the boys sounding for bottom on the crossings with theircanes, while Hi drove the carriage solemnly down the road beside them. The mud was too deep for them to get home in the carriage, but everybodycould see it was there and that they had paid for it and had done theirdarndest, anyway. After all, that's no worse than the way you NewYorkers carry your gloves in your hand in warm weather. You don't needthem, but you want the world to know you've got 'em and wouldn't befound dead without 'em. 

When our Smart Set gives a party, we all try to live up to it as far aspossible, and so we insist on going by carriage. Hi starts hauling us atsix o'clock, six to a load in dry weather, and he usually gets the lastbatch there just in time to begin hauling the first platoon home. 

But those are just little troubles for our Smart Set. Your Smart Set hasno troubles except the job of spending its money fast enough to keepfrom being smothered by the month's income. It does what it pleases, andif anybody objects, it raises the price of something or other by way ofretort. But our Smart Set has to live in Homeburg, and what is more, ithas to live off of Homeburg, which is as hoity-toity a place to liveoff of as you can find. Sally Singer can't afford to offend any one butthe depositors in the Payley Bank, and if DeLancey caused any Homeburgerto stalk down to his father's bank and extract a thousand-dollar savingsdeposit, old man Payley would thrash DeLancey and set him to work on hisfarm. They have to show their superiority over us so deftly andpleasantly that we don't mind it. They have to keep us good-naturedwhile despising us. With half the genius for contemptuous conciliationthat the Payley and Singer children have displayed in the last fiveyears, the French nobility could have kept the peasantry yelling forbread as a privilege long after 1793. 

Emma Madigan weighs two hundred pounds and drives a milk route. She wentto high school with Sally Singer, and it is the joy of her life to pokeher head into the Singer home when Sally has company and yell: "Sall, here's your milk!" But Sally never tries to refrigerate her with theSpitzbergen glare which she uses on us collectively when she goes to thetheater. You couldn't possibly refrigerate Emma, but you might encourageher to say more--like the time when Sarah Payley passed her on thestreet without speaking, being busy treading the upper altitudes with ayoung Princeton College visitor, and Em yelled back: "For goodness'sakes, Sarey, if you didn't lace so tight you could get your chin downand see some one!"

But most of us are not so frank. We are too good-natured. As a matter offact, we'd hate to see the Payleys and Singers common. They help to makeHomeburg interesting, and so long as they know their place and don'tirritate us, we wouldn't hurt their feelings for the world--that is, notmuch. 

There was a dancing school in Homeburg two winters ago, and to theconsternation of every one the Payley and Singer young folks joined it. It took two meetings for us to discover what had clogged up theatmosphere and taken the prance out of things. Then we tumbled. ThePayleys and Singers were educating us. They were fitting us to live inthe rarified upper altitudes of refinement and to mingle with rankwithout stepping all over its feet. By the third meeting Henry Snyderhad caught on to most of the signals and he explained them to a lot ofus beforehand with care. When Sally Singer dropped on to a bench andmoved her skirt ever so slightly aside it was a sign that the young manwith whom she was speaking might sit down and hold sweet converse. Andwhen Sarah Payley smiled brightly at a gentleman from some distance andjust caressed the chair beside her with her eye for the millionth partof a second, that young man, if he had a spark of gentility in him, would hurdle the intervening chairs to arrive. We also discovered howto get away just before the young ladies got bored, by other delicatesigns, and how to derive the fact that they were thirsty and neededsustenance, and just how to imprison them in our strong but respectfularms during a waltz, and how to collect fans and gloves and programs andhandkerchiefs from the floor without grunting or jolting theconversation. It was hard work, and spoiled the evening to a certainextent, but we did the best we could until Jim Reebe spoiled it all inthe fourth lesson. Miss Singer had collected her usual six men duringthe intermission with as many bright glances, and was being admiredproperly and according to Hoyle, when Jim up and remarks, in hismegaphone bass: "Say, Sall, you're a great work of art, but the time youmade a hit with me was the day you slid down the banisters at school. "

That finished the course; and the Smart Set, being unanimously absentthe rest of the winter, we gave ourselves up to vulgar pleasure, stuffedour white gloves back into the bureaus and yelled for encores when wecouldn't get them any other way. 

I'll tell you, a man could be a hero to his valet with half the exertionwhich it takes to be a Somebody to an old grammar-school mate in a smalltown. 

Our Smart Set is disintegrating now, and things look blue for socialprogress in Homeburg. Sally Singer is getting ready to be married thissummer to a Pittsburgh man who wears a cane. The remaining three looklike the old guard at Waterloo closing in under a heavy fire. Looks tome as if there were going to be some of these mess alliances to wind upwith, for Sam Singer is calling on Mabel Andrews in citizen's clothing, she having jeered him out of his Prince Albert; and Henry Snyder hasstopped scoffing and infests the Payley house to an alarming extent. SoI imagine that our Smart Set will get back to shirtsleeves in twogenerations less than yours usually requires, and we'll miss it a lot. Next to the ill feeling between the _Argus_ and the _Democrat_, it hasbeen our greatest diversion. 

IV

THE SERVANT QUESTION IN HOMEBURG

_How Mrs. Singer Amuses Us All by Insisting on Having It_

No apologies, Jim. If the Declaration of Independence who prepares yourmeals for you has packed up and gone, I don't need any explanations. Iunderstand already. You can't ask me up to dinner because there isn'tgoing to be any dinner. If you don't go out to a restaurant, you'll geta bite yourself while Mrs. Jim puts the children to bed. And then you'llspend the evening wondering where you can beg, borrow, abduct, hypnotize, or manufacture another cook. 

I know all about it. The great sorrow has come upon you, and there'sonly one comfort--there are others. It falls upon all who try to get outof doing their own housework in New York. And I'll bet you were goodenough to the last cook, too--only asked her for one night out a week, came to her meals promptly, didn't demand more than a fair living wage, and let her have the rest. Yes, of course you did. And you're going tolet the next one have the best room and ring for her breakfast in themorning, aren't you? What? Draw the line at that? Well, Jim, I admireyour nerve. You're one of the grand old rugged patriots who will not betrodden on. Why did your last cook leave, anyway?

Didn't like the kitchen, eh? And being in a flat you couldn't tear itout and rebuild it. Yes, I agree with you. The servant problem in NewYork is getting to be very serious. To-day you are gay and happy withluxury and comfort all about you, and to-morrow you are pickingsardines out of a can with a fork for dinner. I am certainly glad I livein the country, where servant girls do not come on Monday with twotrunks and go away early Thursday morning with three trunks and abundle. 

We have no servant problem in Homeburg. However, I exclude Mrs. Singerfrom this "we. " There are only two servants in the whole town. Mrs. Singer has them. That is, she tries to have them. Mrs. Singer's attemptto have servants in a town which is full of hired girls is one of thethings which make life worth living and talking about in Homeburg. 

How do I know about it? Bless you, we all know about it. It's a publictragedy. Can't help ourselves. We've had four of Mrs. Singer'sex-servants in our house in six years, and they have all told theirtroubles. Mrs. Singer trains girls for the entire town. She's twice asgood as a domestic science school, and she doesn't charge any tuition. She is devoting her life to the training up of perfect hired girls, andwe revel in the results. It is ungrateful of us to blame her for takingaway our hired girls, because, as a matter of fact, she is our greatestblessing. Right at this minute in Homeburg I know that two eagerfamilies are sitting around waiting for the latest Singer class indomestic science to graduate and come back to them for jobs. It ought tocome most any time. The course rarely lasts over three months. 

You see, Mrs. Singer isn't one of us. She came to Homeburg from a largecity, and she brought her ideas with her. She's not the kind of a woman, either, who is going to cut those ideas down to fit Homeburg. Her planis to change Homeburg over to fit her ideas. She's been working at itfor fifteen years now, and I must say she's won out in several cases. Dress suits are now worn quite unblushingly, we have a country clubhalf a mile from the post-office--that's the advantage of a small town, you can get away from the rush and bustle of the city into the sweetcool country in about four jumps--and no one thinks of serving a partydinner without salad any more. But she's fallen down on one thing. Shecan't keep servants. That problem has been too much for her. Mrs. Payley, her rival, has had the same hired girl for sixteen years ormore; but Mrs. Singer scorns a hired girl. She must have servants, twoof them, and while she has a remarkable constitution and has stood upfor years under the fight, I don't see how she can keep it up muchlonger. 

A hired girl in Homeburg is a very reasonable creature. We never haveany trouble with them, and they have very little with us. We usuallycatch them green and wild, just off the steamer, and they come to usequipped with a thorough working knowledge of the Swedish language, andnothing else to speak of. Our wives take them in and teach them how toboil water, make beds, handle a broom, use clothespins, and all thesimpler tricks of housework, to say nothing of an elementary knowledgeof English, which they usually acquire in a month; and we pay this kinda couple of dollars a week, and they wash the clothes, take care of thefurnace, and mow the lawn with great pleasure. They usually stay a yearor so and then they go to Mrs. Singer's finishing school. They do not gobecause they are discontented, but because she offers them five dollarsa week, which is a pretty fair-sized chunk of the earth to a youngSwedish girl just learning to do a few loops and spirals in English andsaving up the steamer fare to bring her sister over. 

Mrs. Singer takes our nice, green, young hired girls, who are willing todo anything up to the capacity of a stout back, and she tries to makeservants out of them. She gives them embroidered aprons and caps andmakes them keep house her way. And after they have spent a couple ofmonths making coffee to suit Mrs. Singer, and going over the mahogany tosuit Mrs. Singer, and arranging the magazines on the table to suit Mrs. Singer, and taking up the breakfast to Miss Sally to suit Mrs. Singer, and going over the back hall again to suit Mrs. Singer, and keepingtheir mouths closed tightly all day to suit Mrs. Singer, and only goingout on Thursday afternoons to suit Mrs. Singer, they sort of get tiredof the job, and one after another they stop Mrs. Singer at a favorablemoment and say these fatal words:

"Aye gass aye ent stay eny longer. "

Then some Homeburg family joyfully seizes on the deserter, and Mrs. Singer starts out all over again on the job of making a servant out of ahired girl. 

I have to admire the woman for her eternal grit. She won't give up fora minute. She is going to run her house just so if she has to train upa million girls and lose them all. Half the time she has to do her ownwork, but I'll bet that when she has the luncheon ready she puts herlittle white lace napkin on her hair and comes in and announces it toherself in the proper style; and I'll bet, too, that she doesn't talk toherself while she is working in the kitchen, either. She says the wayHomeburg women talk to their servants is disgraceful; that it lowers aservant's respect for her mistress. I'd give a lot to see Mrs. Singerlooking at herself coldly in the glass after breakfast and givingherself orders for the day in a tone that would brook no familiaritywhatever. 

Our women-folks, who are familiar with the Singer residence, say that itis a beautiful thing full of monogrammed linen and embroidered towelsand curtains that have to be washed as often as a white shirt, and thatwhenever they call they are pretty sure to find Mrs. Singer trying toteach some new and slightly dizzy second girl how to take care of thehouse without breaking off the edges. 

You observe the fluency and ease with which I say "second girl. " We alldo in Homeburg. We're used to talking about second girls since Mrs. Singer has tried to keep one. As far as her experience has taught us, weare firmly convinced that having a second girl is like having mumps onthe other side too. When Mrs. Singer isn't busy trying to teach her cookhow to run the oven and the plate heater and serve the soup all at thesame time, she is attempting to give a new second girl some inkling ofthe general ideas of her duties. Trouble is most of them are ten-secondgirls. They listen to the program in the Singer household and then theysprint for safety to some family where they will work twice as hard, butwill give three times as much satisfaction. Then Mrs. Singer armsherself with the dust rag and clear-starch bowl, and subs on the jobuntil she finds a new second girl--after which the cook gives up her jobwith a loud report, and Mr. Singer stays down-town for dinner at theDelmonico Hotel until the Singer house management is staved off therocks again. 

We feel sorry for the Singers and invite them out a good deal while theyare hunting cooks. And they pay us back royally as soon as the householdstaff is fully recruited once more. We eat strange but delicious dishesmade by a reluctant and mystified girl, plus Mrs. Singer'spersuasiveness and will power; and said girl, still reluctant, andscared into the bargain, serves the dinner with a lace-edged apron and anapkin on her hair, Mrs. Singer egging her in loud whispers like theprompter in grand opera. Steering a green cook through a dinner party, and keeping up a merry conversation at the same time, calls for about asmuch social skill as anything I know of. I myself stand in awe of Mrs. Singer. 

As for the rest of us--we have no servant problem, having no servants. And about the only hired girl problem we have is the following: "Shallthe girl eat with the family or in the kitchen?" Mrs. Singer wished thaton us. Ten years ago there was no question at all. The girl ate with thefamily, and waited on the table when something was needed which couldn'tbe reached. Then Mrs. Singer came to town and made her eat in thekitchen, since which time the question has raged with more or less furyand the whole town has chosen up sides on it. Half of us want the girlto eat in the kitchen, and the other half are invincibly democratic andhave her at the table. 

As for the girls, they are divided too. Half of the girls who come tosee about places ask us: "Do I have to eat in the kitchen?" and theother half ask: "Do I have to eat with the family?" And of course it'sjust our luck that the people who wish to dine by themselves never canfind girls who prefer the kitchen, and the people who insist onassociating with their help usually lose them because said help has beenspoiled somewhere else by being allowed to eat in the kitchen, far fromthe domestic squabbles and the children with the implacable appetite forspread bread. 

But on the whole this problem doesn't bother us much, and our hiredgirls are a great comfort. They usually stay with us until they aremarried or retire from old age, and after they've been ten years in ahouse they're pretty much one of the family. The Payleys' girl has beenwith them sixteen years, as I said before, and when she wants to go tothe opera-house to an entertainment, Wert Payley makes young DeLanceyPayley take her. It's the only use he's found for DeLancey as yet. Wekeep out of the kitchen after supper, unless too strongly pressed bythirst, because usually from seven to ten some hardworking young Swedishman sits bolt upright in a straight-backed chair, his head against thewall, discussing romance and other subjects of interest with a scared, resolute expression. Usually this goes on for about three years beforeanything happens. Then the girl admits, with some hesitation, that sheis going to get married, and our wife or mother, as the case may be, hustles around and helps make the trousseau and pick out the linen. Thewedding takes place in the parlor, and about a year later the youngSwedish-American citizen who arrives is named after whatever member ofour family is the most convenient as to sex. 

We never entirely lose a good hired girl in Homeburg. They pass us on totheir relatives when they are married, and come back to visit with greatfaithfulness. In this topsy-turvy Eldorado of ours where a mansometimes becomes rich before he really knows what anything larger thanfive dollars looks like, many of our girls draw prizes in the shape ofgood farmers and prosperous young merchants. But their heads aren'tturned by it. They come around in their new automobiles and take us outriding, just as if we had money too. The wife of our mayor used to workfor us, and when the electric light gang stuck a light where it wouldshine straight into our back porch, thus reducing the value of our house105 per cent. As a place of employment for a nice, attractive girl insummers, I stepped over to the mayor's office and asked him if heremembered how he used to sit on that porch himself. He smiled once, winked twice, and three minutes afterward four men were on their way torelocate that pole. 

If I have any criticism of the hired girls in our town, it is becausethey go to Europe too much. Now, of course, it's no worse for a hiredgirl to go to Europe for the summer than it is for any one else toindulge themselves in that way. But that's the irritating part. Nobodyelse goes. Outside of Mrs. Wert Payley and one or two school teachers, Idon't suppose any Homeburg people have crossed the Atlantic. But half adozen of our hired girls go every year. They leave late in the spring, and during the hot weary summer their mistresses toil patiently alongkeeping the job open if they can't find a substitute who will work for afew months, for the girls who go to Europe are usually pearls of greatprice and must be gotten back at all cost. I don't suppose anything isharder on the temper than to work over a hot kitchen stove all day inJuly, and then to sit down to supper, a damp and wilted mess ofweariness, and read a souvenir card from your hired girl, said carddepicting a cool and inviting Swedish meadow with snow-topped mountainsin the distance. 

Our girl has been to Europe three times. She has crossed on the_Mauretania_, the old _Deutschland_ and the new _Olympic_. Two yearsfrom this summer she thinks she will try the _Imperator_. Often in theevening she tells us of the wonders of these great vessels--of thebeauty of the sunset at sea, and of the smoke and noise and majesty ofLondon. I suppose it indicates a jealous disposition, but it makes memad sometimes to think that it takes practically all the money I canearn, working steadily and with two weeks off per year, to send thatgirl abroad. 

Of course I don't mean it just that way. She doesn't get all of it. Infact she gets three dollars a week of it. Out of this she saves aboutthree dollars and twenty-five cents because sometimes she gets a dollarextra for doing the washing. And when she goes to Europe for the summeron the same ship with the Astors and the Vanderbilts, it sounds moremagnificent than it really is. She is on the same ship, but abouteleven decks down, in a corner of the steerage close to the stern, wherethe smells are rich and undisturbed. And she doesn't visit ruins and artgalleries in Europe, but a huge circle of loving relatives, who pass heraround from farm to farm for months, while she does amateur businessagent work for the steamship lines, talking up the wonders of Americaand--allow me to blush--the saintliness of her employers, and comingblithely back home in the fall with three or four old childhood chumsfor roommates. 

Just the same, I envy our girls. I wish I could go to Europe in thesteerage, not being able to go any other way. 

It's a fortunate thing for us that our hired girls do go back home andproselyte for America, or else we would soon be jam up against the realthing in help problems. If, for any reason, the Swedish nation shouldcease contributing to Homeburg, we should have to do our own work. Ioften wonder at the things our American girls will do rather than to goon the fighting deck as commander of some one else's kitchen. Twenty-five of our girls go up to Paynesville every morning at six onthe interurban and make cores in the rolling mills there all day. Carfare and board deducted, they get less than a good hired girl--andthey don't go to Europe for the summers and never by any chance marrysome rising young farmer who has made the first payment on a quartersection. Several of our middle-aged young ladies sew for a dollar a dayand keep house by themselves. And there's Mary Smith, who has been atown problem. She's thirty-five and an orphan. She lives in a houseabout as large as a piano box and tries to scare away the wolf byselling flavoring extracts and taking orders for books. She's never morethan two meals ahead of an embarrassing appetite. Every fall we digdown and buy her winter coal, and she hasn't bought any clothes for tenyears. Some one gives her an ex-dress and Mary does her best to make itover, but she never looks much more enticing than a scarecrow in theresult. 

Mary's hands are red with chilblains in the winter, and the poorhouseyawns for her. But will she take a place as hired girl? Not she. Maryhas her pride. She'll sell you things you don't want, which is as nearbegging as graft is to politics, and she'll wear second-hand clothes andtake home cold bread pudding from the hotel--but she will not be a hiredgirl and go to Europe in the summer and marry into an automobile. Onceshe did consent to become Mrs. Singer's second girl. Mrs. Singer wasdesperate, and after a long defense Mary consented on condition that shebe called the "up-stairs maid. " But she only lasted three days. Marycould have drawn five dollars a week and Mrs. Singer's clothes, whichwould have fitted her. But Mary couldn't take orders--not that kind. Shecame back to take orders from us for a patent glass washtub or somethingof the kind--and we sighed wearily. 

V

HOMEBURG'S LEISURE CLASS

_It is not as large as New York's but it is twice as ingenious_

Confound it, Jim, I wish you hadn't told me that your friend Willistonnever worked a day in his life! You don't know how it disappointed me. 

Why? Because I don't know when I have met a man whom I liked so much atfirst sight as I did Williston. He suited me from the ground up. I neverspent a more interesting afternoon with any one. No matter what he did, he interested me--I enjoyed watching him handle his cigar as well as Idid hearing him tell about his Amazon adventures. Says I to myself:"Here is a man whose friendship I will win if I have to live in New Yorkall my life to get it. " And then you had to go and spoil it all. 

Oh, yes, I know it's just my backwoods way of looking at things. I'm notsaying what I do as a boast. I'm making a confession of it. I know whyWilliston doesn't work. It's because he owns a piano box full of bondsleft by his late lamented pa, and when he was educated, the word "work"was crossed out of his spelling-book in red ink. And I'm not saying thathe isn't a fine fellow. He's intelligent and witty and companionable andforty other desirable things. But he won't work. Somehow that sticks inmy vision of him. It reminds me of the case of Mamie Gastit, who was theprettiest, best-dispositioned, and most capable girl in Homeburg, butwho had a glass eye. We didn't hold it up against her, but it made usawfully sad. There were plenty of Homeburg girls who would have beendecorated by a glass eye. Why did Providence have to wish it on thefinest girl in town?

You say it is no crime not to work in New York? Bless you, I know it. Infact, loafing in New York is the most fascinating business in the world. Why, it seems as if you New York men actually struggle to get sparetime. I've sat in your office and watched you on Saturday morningworking yourself into a blue haze in your efforts to get done earlyenough to cord up a fine big mess of leisure on Saturday afternoon. That's the difference between New York and Homeburg. In Homeburg youwould have been stretching out your job to last until suppertime--unless you were one of our nineteen golfers, or the roads weregood enough to let you drive over to the baseball game at Paynesville. 

Leisure in New York means pleasure, excitement, and seven dozen kinds ofinterest. But for many and many a long year in hundreds of Homeburghomes, leisure has meant waiting for meal times--and not much ofanything else. 

City people laugh at country people for beating the chickens to roost. But what are you going to do when going to bed is the most fascinatingdiversion available after supper? I've noticed that as fast as a smalltown man discovers something else to do in the evening, his light billgoes up and up. When crokinole was introduced into Homeburg twenty oddyears ago, the kerosene wagon had to make an extra mid-week trip. Whenthe magazines came down from thirty-five cents to ten and you could getthree of them and a set of books for one dollar down and a dollar amonth until death did you part, they had to put an operator in thetelephone exchange after 8 P. M. Because of the general sleeplessness. When the automobile came, and when two moving picture theaters, aChautauqua, and a Lyceum course opened fire in one year, and thebusiness men fitted up a club with an ancient pool table in it, Homeburggot chummy with all the evening hours, and kicked so hard about theelectric lights going off at midnight that the company had to run theman hour longer. And I suppose if any invader ever puts in an all-nightrestaurant where you can have lobster and a soubrette on the table atthe same time, a certain proportion of us will get as foolish as you areand will forget how to go to bed at all by artificial light. 

We've changed that much from the past generation. We know what to dowith leisure in the evening. But we're still awkward and embarrassedwhen we meet it by daylight. Since we have built our Country Club, a fewof us have learned to enjoy ourselves in a fitful and guilty fashionlate in the afternoon. But as a rule, even to-day, when you give aHomeburg man a bright golden daylight hour of leisure, he has no moreuse for it than he would have for a five-ton white elephant with anappetite for ice-cream. And that, Jim, is why I can't speed myself up toappreciate a young man who has never worked and never intends to. Istill have to look at him with my Homeburg eyes. And in Homeburg, when aman doesn't work when he has a chance and takes what amusement we haveto offer as a steady diet in perfect content, we know something is thematter with him--and we are sorry for him. 

Leisure has killed more people in Homeburg than work ever did. For yearsour biggest problem was the job of keeping our retired farmers alive. When a farmer has worked forty years or so, and has accumulated aquarter section of land, and a few children who need high schooleducation, he rents his farm and moves into town, where he livescomfortably on eighty dollars a month and fills a tasty tomb in a veryfew years. It isn't so hard on the farmer's wife, because she takes herhousework into town with her and keeps busy. But when the farmer hassettled down in town, far from a chance to work, he discovers that hehas about fourteen hours of leisure each day on his hands and nothing todo with them but to eat. Out of regard for his digestion he can't eatmore than three hours a day. That leaves him eleven hours in which to godown-town for the mail and do the chores around the house. 

He stands it pretty well the first year. The second year is so long thathe begins to lay plans for his centennial, and about the third year hetakes to his bed and dies, with a sigh of relief. That's what leisuredoes to a Homeburg man who isn't used to it. And that is one of thereasons why, when I see a man in New York with nothing to do fromchoice, I think of the sad army of the unemployed in Homeburg drapingthemselves around the grain office every day in fine weather, andwearing away the weary years in idleness because they are too old towork, and don't have to, anyway. 

Of late years we have been working earnestly to conserve our retiredfarmers. They are fine men, and we hate to see them wasted. We have beentrying to reduce their leisure--just as a city man tries to reduce hisflesh. We elect them to everything possible. We have taught a number ofthem how to play pool in the Commercial Club. We have started a farmers'elevator, a farmers' bank and a planter factory, and have got them toinvest money. That has been a godsend, because it has kept a largenumber of them busy and happy trying to save the said money. But wherewe have saved one retired farmer, the automobile has saved ten. Wheneverone of our unemployed comes out with a machine, we sigh with relief andstop worrying about him. It's just the same as if he had been givenwings and a world to explore. In summer, our retired farmers who haveautos loaf around the country from Indiana to Idaho and talk crops inthe garages of a thousand towns. And in winter they rebuild their cars, and talk good roads. Twenty years ago you could talk good roads to afarmer or bang him with a club, with the same result. But last year ourretired farmers organized a good roads association, and to amusethemselves they have dragged the roads for miles around and have built amile of rock road leading south to the cemetery--where in the old Aprildays, as Henry Snyder says, the deceased was buried once, but themourners got buried twice--going out and coming back. 

We have a real leisure class in Homeburg, however, outside of theretired farmers, who really can't help themselves. Our genuinemetropolitan leisure class consists of DeLancey Payley and Gibb Ogle. They are, as far as I know, the only two people in Homeburg who loaffrom choice year in and year out in perfect content. We have done ourbest with both of them, but we have given up. Leisure is what they werecreated for. It is a talent with them, and their only talent. They havedeveloped it to the best of their ability. 

DeLancey's is the saddest case, because so much money was wasted on him. Wert Payley is the richest man in our part of the country. He owns abank and one or two counties out West. He sent DeLancey East to school, where he was educated regardless of expense or anything else and wasreturned a few years ago a finished product, sublime, though a littleterrifying to look at, and reeking with knowledge of one kind oranother. I have heard it said that DeLancey can tell offhand what hasbeen the correct thing in dress for each of the last thirty-five years, and that he can handle as many as fifteen articles of cutlery andforkery at a dinner table with absolute accuracy. 

DeLancey has been at home almost ten years now, and his chief missionhas been to ornament Homeburg and add to its elegance on stateoccasions. His father had designed him for a captain of finance, andwhen he first came home DeLancey was put in the bank in order that hemight work up by degrees into the bond business or some other auriferousform of toil. Wert Payley almost had nervous prostration from overworkthat year, and in the end he had to give up. He couldn't carry his ownload and make DeLancey work too. It was too much. No human being shouldbe asked to do it. Wert often says that if he had had nothing else to dohe could have kept DeLancey at work at least part of the time, but thathe was too old to shoulder the task on top of his other duties. SoDeLancey left the bank, except as an enthusiastic check casher, and tookup his life work--I mean that, of course, figuratively. I mean his lifeoccupation--hang it, that won't do either! He took up his mission--thework for which his ardent young soul was fitted. He began to specializein leisure. 

For close to nine years DeLancey has loafed. It is a miracle to us. Wecan't understand his endurance. Yet he thrives on it. Wert Payley hasgiven up trying to make him work, but he has taken what he considers tobe an awful revenge. He has refused to spend one cent for carfare. DeLancey can hang around Homeburg until he dies, but if he wants toleave, he must earn the money himself. And DeLancey hasn't been fiftymiles from Homeburg since he slipped the clutch out of his tired, throbbing brain and let it rest, nine years ago. 

We have to admire his ingenuity. He kills time so scientifically. Theysay it takes him two hours to do himself up in the morning after he getsout of bed, and that he has almost as many beautifying tools as anactress. He doesn't get down-town before ten. It takes him from fifteenminutes to half an hour to buy his morning cigar. That is, he talks toMcMuggins, the druggist, as long as Mac will stand for it. Mac has aregular schedule. If Delancey buys a ten-cent cigar, Mac will talk withhim fifteen minutes. If he buys a fifteen-cent cigar, he will talk halfan hour, if business isn't too brisk. Mac keeps a box of fifteen-centcigars especially for DeLancey, but he says it is an awful risk. IfDeLancey were to die on him, he couldn't sell those cigars in a hundredyears. 

The tellers at the bank are good for fifteen minutes or so afterDeLancey has bought his cigar; he strolls in and gossips with themuntil his father begins to snort ominously in his little railed-off penmarked "President. " Cooney Simpson, the tailor, likes DeLancey, and theytalk clothes for half an hour almost every morning. Then it's noon, andthis is his hardest problem, because every one goes to dinner at noonexcept the Payleys and Singers, who have luncheon at one. If DeLanceycan find Sam Singer, he is all right. But Sam, who used to loafenthusiastically with him, has rosy ideas about Mabel Andrews now, andhe is working hard in his father's bank and on the farms. It was abitter day for DeLancey when Sam went to work. It almost shook his faithin idleness. But he stood firm. 

Luncheon kills two hours for DeLancey, and then he goes up to theHomeburg Commercial Club and shoots the pool balls around the tableuntil 4:30, waiting eagerly for some one to stop working and come toplay with him. Sometimes they come and sometimes they don't. If theydon't, he goes down to the hotel and talks with a traveling man. I oftensee him in the lobby of the Delmonico, sitting in magnificent ease, blowing large smoke rings and talking with an air of unconsciousgrandeur to some eager-eyed drummer, who is delighted but mystified atthe ease with which he is breaking into the first families. DeLancey hasa quiet way of talking about the East and the great people thereof whichfools even us sometimes. 

DeLancey makes his toilet after dinner at night and that of course killsan hour or more. Then he calls on Madeline Hicks, old Judge Hicks'sdaughter, when she will let him. He has an idea he would like to marryher, but while she likes him, they say she can't bring herself to marrya man of leisure and have the whole town sorry for her. But he takes herto all the parties, and about once a week his father lets him have theautomobile, if the chauffeur doesn't want to use it. On other nightsDeLancey comes down-town and buys another cigar at the restaurant. It isas good as a show to see DeLancey buy his evening cigar. You'd think hewas taking over a railroad, he chooses it with such care. The youngfarmer boys and the workers in the factory come down-town at night andloaf around the restaurants without any excuse. They have to kill thetime. But that would be too coarse work for DeLancey. He doesn't comedown-town to loaf--Oh, no! He has merely dropped in on his orbit. Ittakes him half the evening to buy his cigar and smoke it, conversing ashe does so with a few selected citizens on the benefits of slim-cutclothes and the origin of the pussy-cat hat. 

Sometimes DeLancey can abduct some busy young chap and make him play around of golf on week-day afternoons, but not often. That's thedifference between our clubs and yours. We have clubs, but we don't usethem. We wouldn't think of spending time there if we could spend it atbusiness. Nothing is lonelier on week days than our golf club, and oneof the chief duties of the caretaker at the Commercial Club is to dustoff the reading table. We have our clubs, and that is the main object. We know that they are there, and that we could enjoy them if we wantedto. Perhaps we do want to. But it's a hard art to learn. And, oh, howpatiently and earnestly DeLancey is trying to teach us! If it were anyone but he, we might learn faster. But he sort of figures as a horribleexample. It's like a battered and yellowed wreck advocating cigarettes, or a bald-headed barber pushing his own hair tonic. 

Gibb Ogle, the other member of our leisure class, is a very differentkind of a bird. His art is more sublime than DeLancey's because he hasno one to support him. He has worked down to his present state fromnothing at all. He is a self-unmade man. With no resources, not even aloving wife with a wash tub, he lives a life of perfect ease andidleness. He doesn't even have to hunt for means of killing time, asDeLancey does. Time with him dies a natural death. He is not implicatedin the sad event in any way. All he does is to watch its demise. Hewatches whole hours pass away while leaning against the door-frame ofthe Delmonico Hotel. Chet Frazier and Sim Bone got into an argument oneday, and to settle it they went over and took Gibb away from thebuilding. It didn't fall, and Sim won. Gibb has watched several thousandhours expire while propping up the Q. B. & C. Depot. He is the chiefspectator at every fire, runaway, dog fight and public event. He is amovable landmark, as permanent as the Republican flagpole in the citypark. I have never yet gone down-town in the morning without seeing Gibbon the street. And very seldom have I gone home at night, even in thehowling blizzards of winter, without passing Gibb leaning against thewarm bright show window of the last open place of business, and waitingwith placid greediness for one final event of some kind to transpirebefore going to his well-earned repose. 

Beside Gibb's leisure, DeLancey's is poor amateurish stuff. Gibb's totalincome during the year would hardly exceed twenty-five dollars, and itdoesn't do him much good at that. When he gets any money, he eats it upin the most determined and hasty fashion. I have seen him eat a dollar'sworth of ham sandwiches in an afternoon--because he had the dollar. Whathe does between dollars is a town mystery. He doesn't beg. He isbelieved by some to absorb sustenance from the air, like a plant. But Ihappen to know that he absorbs a good deal of sustenance from theDelmonico Hotel. He has attached himself to this hotel as a sort ofretainer, and through all its changes of ownership he has hung on. Hewill not work, but he gives the place his moral support and speakshighly of it to all comers. He will even carry a satchel across to thedepot, but only as an accommodation to the hotel. In return he asksnothing and thus saves his proud spirit from the insult of a refusal. But I think he has first pick of the scattered remains of the dinnersthat leave the kitchen door whenever the cook is good-natured. 

I say I think so, because few of us have seen Gibb Ogle eat. He has apride, and performs this humiliating act in secret. But grocers tell methat he is always offering to dispose of broken-up crackers, stalecheese and old mackerel. "I'll just carry that out for you, " he says. And they understand and let him do it. One night as he hurried past me, a package dropped from under his coat and broke at my feet. It wasfood--dry bread and a bologna skin with a little meat in the end. Hestopped and told me how hard it was to find food for a dog in which hewas interested. But that was a fib. With all his faults Gibb nevermaintained a dog in idleness. 

In summers Gibb leads a care-free, happy life, sunning himself all dayand sleeping comfortably at night in any one of a dozen places. He isour village grasshopper, taking no thought of the chill future. How helives through our fierce winters is a mystery. He sleeps in barns. Hesleeps on the coal in the electric light power house. If the clerk atthe hotel happens to be a friend of his, he curls up in a chair in thelobby. Sometimes all of these fail him. I have heard that he spent onewinter in an empty room over a store, and thawed out his toes onseveral mornings. We are always afraid some crackling January dawn willfind Gibb frozen hard on the streets, and it is a relief when springcomes and he begins to fatten up a little and drink in sunshine again. 

We'd like to send Gibb to the county home. Some of us are even willingto contribute to his support, scandalous as it would be. But it is hardto do, because Gibb is no pauper. He is a gentleman of leisure with thedignity of an Indian. His worn suits are neat, and he is as dapper witha battered hat and a four-year-old celluloid collar as if he spent realmoney on his wardrobe. He chooses his life and lives it withoutcomplaint. Periodically we strive heroically to make him work. The boysat the planter factory, who are a rough lot but have some hold on Gibbbecause they entertain him out of their lunch boxes, kidnap him abouttwice a year and drag him in to the superintendent to get a job forhim. Gibb protests frantically that he has business which can't beneglected--that he is just closing a deal for a good position at thehotel--that he is going away on a trip--but nothing helps him. Heaccepts the job with ill-concealed horror, and the factory boys climb upon the roof of the main building and hoist a flag. We all know what itmeans. Gibb is working again. And we all know what will happen next. 

About two days later Gibb will be limping to the factory very late withhis off-foot done up in an enormous comforter. "That's what you havedone, boys, " he will say with simple dignity, "you've hurt that old sorefoot of mine. It's never been right since I hurt it with the firecompany. It's in awful shape now. I guess I'll lose it at last. Yououghtn't to have done it, boys. Goodness knows, I'd have worked allthese years if I'd had any foot to speak of. "

Then he goes in and resigns--after which the foot recovers in greathaste, and Gibb stands on it relentlessly twelve hours a day in the oldway, while he watches the world go round and waits for the judgment day. 

You'd think from the way we hammer at both DeLancey and Gibb to go towork that they would hang together, being in the same class. But theydon't. In fact they have the greatest contempt for each other. DeLanceywill not speak to Gibb, and thinks it is a crime that he isn't sent tothe stone pile; while Gibb speaks of DeLancey in pitying accents as ayoung man who ought to know better than to waste his time herding alittle white pill into a hole in a cow pasture. Gibb is very severe onthe frivolities of the prosperous. He can't bear to see them fritteringaway their time. 

That's our leisure class in Homeburg, and it isn't growing. If it waswe'd be worried, and the Commercial Club would hold meetings about it. And I'm just telling you these things so that you'll see why I am sowarped and foolish regarding Williston; it's just my small townignorance--My, I wish that chap would get a job!

VI

HOMEBURG'S WORST ENEMY

_How Old Man Opportunity Stands Outside the Town and Beckons to herGreatest Men_

You don't say, Jim! Gosh, let me look! Where? Behind the big fellow inthe two-gallon plug hat? There--I see him! Yes, sir! It's he! I couldtell him anywhere. Do you suppose we could get up nearer? What, go up inthe elevator with him? Say, I haven't the nerve. No, I don't want--Thisis close enough--Why, there isn't even a crowd! You mean to say he comesdown here just like this right along? Do you see him often?

Why, when I go home and tell the boys I watched Teddy Roosevelt go downthe street common as dirt and could have gone up in the same elevatorwith him, they'll want me to give a lecture in the Woodmen Hall. Itcertainly beats all what you can see in New York for nothing. 

That's where you have all the luck, Jim--you big city folks. You keepyour interesting people at home; there's nowhere bigger for them to go. No matter how famous or successful they are, they have to stick aroundand mingle unless they get Europitis of the intellect. When you grow upwith a chum in New York and he discovers a talent that has been kickingaround in his garret ever since he was born, you don't lose him. He juststays at home and grows up to fit the town. But when I want to see myold Homeburg playmates who have succeeded, I have to go to New York orChicago or San Francisco, or some other big place where old Opportunitykeeps a wrecking crew busy all the time beating in doors. Opportunitydoesn't come into a small town and knock. He stands outside and beckons. 

Life in Homeburg is one long bereavement because of this fact. Seems asif the world was always looking Homeburg men over, the way a housewifelooks over an asparagus patch, and yanking out the ones who stick up alittle higher than the rest. We don't worry about the good who die youngin Homeburg; but the interesting who go early and forget to come backmake us sad and sore. No sooner does a Homeburg man begin to broaden outand get successful and to hoist the town upward as he climbs himself, than we begin to grieve. We know what is coming. Presently he will godown to the _Democrat_ office and insert a notice, advertising for salea seven-room house with gas and water, good cistern, orchard withbearing trees, good barn and milch cow, cement walks and watertightcellar. And he will sell that place at a sacrifice, which he can wellafford, and go off to the city, where he will learn to wear a fur-linedcoat, kick about the financial legislation and visit us on Christmas Dayonce per decade. 

I sometimes wonder what Homeburg would be like if all her bright boysand girls should come back. Don't suppose the town could hold them atall. It would be stretched out of shape in a week. But it would be aglorious place to live in, and wouldn't we shine in art and music andpolitics and finance--to say nothing of baseball! Suppose we had ForrestBrady back home, catching for the Homeburg team! He gets seven thousanddollars a year from Boston now; but I remember when he helped put dentsin Paynesville baseball pride for nothing, and would pay some youngstera quarter to hustle baggage at the depot in his absence. And suppose theCongregational choir still had Mary Saunders! Why, we could charge adollar a seat for ordinary services, and people would come down fromChicago to attend! When I think what she gets for one concert now, andthen think how long the Ladies' Aid Society has been working to paintthe church and haven't made it yet, it makes me wish we could putHomeburg on wheels and haul it after some of our distinguished children. And what if we had Alex McQuinn to write up the _Democrat_ again? Everymonth we almost ruin ourselves at home buying all the magazines hewrites for; but when he was a fat young thing in spectacles huntinglocals and trying to write funny things for the _Democrat_, he wasn'tappreciated at all. Old Judge Hicks, who had no sense of humor, chasedhim several miles once for telling how he tried to stop the 4:11 trainby yelling "Whoa" at it. And Editor Ayers had to fire Alex to keep thepeace. 

When Rollin Derby, who draws pictures for your New York paper, went toschool, he could climb a tree by digging his bare toes into the roughbark, but was not otherwise distinguished. When Maurice Gadby was a boyin Homeburg, he went barefooted in summer with the rest of us, and whocould have guessed that he would grow up to give tango teas for yourfour hundred and only allow the better quality of them to pay himtwenty-five dollars per cup at that? But the career that amuses me mostis Jack Nixon--"Shinner" Nixon, we used to call him. He commands abattleship for a living now; and Homeburg is exactly seven miles fromthe nearest stream that is navigable by a duck. We used to walk out tothat stream Saturday mornings, spend four hours building a dam and thenswim painfully on our elbows and knees in the puddle we had made untildark, but Shinner wouldn't go in. He was a regular young Goethals whenit came to dam building, but he abhorred water, especially behind theears. 

Back of my generation the batting average was just about as good. Itseemed to have been the fashion of Homeburg boys of thirty years ago togo out and run Nebraska politically. Two governors and a representativehave come from our town. If we had them here now, we wouldn't have tofight so desperately to get a county surveyor or coroner on the ticketevery four years. Samuel P. Wiggins, who now lives in a stone hutcovering an acre in Chicago and owns a flock of flour mills, was onceSam Wiggins, who bought grain in our town and married the daughter ofone of our most reliable washerwomen. She comes back occasionally now, and we can't see but that she's as nice as she used to be when shehauled our family wash home in a little wagon every Saturday night. Being rich hasn't hurt her at all, though it has spoiled her figurebeyond the utmost and most heartrending efforts of her clothes toconceal. 

Then there's Mrs. Maysworth. When she comes down from Chicago for avisit, the old town fairly hums for a month. We pick up our interest inart and woman's suffrage and cheap trips to Europe and Dante's_Inferno_; the Shakespeare Club is revived, the bookstore sells its copyof Browning, and the tone of the afternoon teas goes up about twohundred per cent. Mrs. Maysworth was the ruling spirit of a little bunchof prosperous Homeburg people who lived at the end of Milk Street--weused to call it the cream end of Milk Street. When they were with us, Homeburg was called the Athens of the Steenth Congressional District. Weheard singers and lecturers, who jumped towns of fifty thousand oneither side of us. We had state presidents of Women's Federations andChurch Societies. We had a free library before Mr. Carnegie had a bankaccount. North Milk Street established it, and every Saturday afternoonthe muddy feet of the tough south side kids scuffled over Mrs. Maysworth's hardwood floors, the first west of Chicago, while theirowners drew out books, the said library being located in an extinctconservatory, which protruded from the house like a large wart. 

Homeburg was a Mecca of learning and refinement in those days; and thensix of these families pulled out in the same year and moved to Chicago, where they could soak up a little more culture instead of giving awayall they had. They left a chasm in our midst as big as the Grand Canyon. It never has been filled--for me at least. I feel, when I wander up thatfine old shady street, past those houses filled with people who are onlyas wise as I am, as if I were wandering through the deserted haunts ofan ancient and irreplaceable civilization. 

That's the way it goes with us--one bereavement after another. It'smighty hard to be a mother of sons in Homeburg. I worked in thepost-office for a year once--handed out mail--and I got to know justexactly what most of the mothers in town wanted. I could please themwith a new magazine and mystify them with a circular or a businessletter. But if I wanted to light them up until they took the shadows outof the corners as they went out, I would give them a letter from a son, way off somewhere, making good. The best of them didn't write any toooften. Once a week is pretty regular, I suppose, from the other end; butyou should see the mother begin to come in hungry again the second dayafter her letter came. And when a boy came home successful andprosperous, and his proud mother towed him down Main Street on pretenseof getting him to carry a spool of thread home for her, it used to goto my heart to see the wistful looks of her women friends. There ishardly a family in Homeburg of the right age which hasn't a grown-up sonoff at war somewhere--fighting failure. It's grand when they win; but Ihate to think of some of our boys who haven't come back. 

If it's hard on the mothers, it's even harder on the Homeburg girls. They say there are one hundred thousand old maids in Massachusetts. I'llbet that's just about the number of Massachusetts young men who havegone West or somewhere, and haven't remembered the things they said atparting as well as the girls did. We've got plenty of girls in Homeburgwho are getting intimately acquainted with the thirties--fine girls, still pretty, bright, and keeping up with the world. Young men come intotown and do their best to get on a "thou-beside-me" footing, but somehowthe girls don't seem to marry. At the root of almost every case there'san old Homeburg boy. Maybe he's making good somewhere, and they're bothwaiting until he does. Maybe he isn't making good and is too proud toask her to wait. Maybe she's waiting alone--because some other girl washandier in the new place. And maybe it wasn't a case of wait at all, only the boy who went away looked better to some Homeburg girl than anyof those who stayed at home. That was the case with Sam Flanburg andMinnie Briggs a few years ago. 

Sam is on the Chicago Board of Trade and is one of our old-time boys. Two years ago he came back, roaringly prosperous, to visit for the firsttime since he had left, and pretty suddenly he discovered to hisamazement that on packing up ten years before he'd left a pearl of greatprice behind, said pearl being Minnie. In other words he fell in loveover his ears with her, and Minnie, who was one of our very nicestgirls, with a disposition like triple distilled extract of charity, treated him like a dog. He stayed around for a month cluttering up theBriggs's front porch day and night, while Minnie put up an imitation ofhaughty indifference and careless frivolity which was as good as a showfor every one in town except Sam, who couldn't see through it. That'sone of our small town assets--you get to look on at most of the loveaffairs. We watched Minnie and Sam with our hearts in our mouths forfear she'd carry it too far and lose him, for every one had it straightfrom Mary Askinson, who is intimately acquainted with a close friend ofMinnie's old school chum, that Minnie had been in love with Sam sincethey graduated from the high school together. It was all we could dofrom breaking in and interfering, especially when Sam went off his feedand began to throw out ugly talk about going to the Philippines or someplace where fever can be gotten cheap. But one morning Sam camedown-town, and the first man who saw his face called up his wife andtold her the good news. Talk about extra editions for distributing news!Before a city paper could have gotten an extra on the street, fiveintimate friends of Minnie's had dropped in casually to see her, andwhen they saw her face, of course they fell on her neck. Sam told ChetFrazier next day that it made him so mad to think he'd lived twentyyears in the same town with Minnie and had never appreciated hisblessings that he felt like climbing Pikes Peak and kicking himself off. 

There's Mary Smith. She's our prize old maid and dresses like a mailsack full of government seeds, but they say she was the prettiest girlin Homeburg when young Cyrus McCord went to Chicago to carve out hisfuture so that he could come home and marry her. But Cyrus didn't carveout his future. He married it instead, and Mary is almost fifty now, living alone and getting peculiar, like so many of our lonely old folksdo. 

Taking it all around, you can't blame us for feeling a little bithostile to the big grabby towns which reach out like tax collectorsevery year and take a tithe of our boy and girl crop--first choice too. But of course we're enormously proud of our Homeburg people who go outand help run the world, and we watch their careers like hawks. WhenChester Arnett was running for a state office out West, I'll bet twentyHomeburg families subscribed for a Denver paper to read about him; andwhen Deacon White was making his great plunges in Wall Street, Homeburglooked at the financial page of the Chicago papers first and then readthe baseball. We're as happy over their success as if they were ourchildren--but it's always embarrassing for a little while when aHomeburg man who has made good comes back to visit in the old town. We're aching to rush up and wring his arm off, but we want to know howhe feels about it first. One or two experiences have made us gun-shy. Wecan't forget Lyla Enbright, who moved away with her family years ago andmarried a national bank or something of the kind in the East. She didn'tcome home for ten years, but finally the father died and Lyla came backto sell off some property. A lot of us had made mud pies with Lyla, andwhile she hadn't shown any great genius in that or anything else, shewas jolly and we liked her, so we tried to rush up and greet herrapturously. 

Those who didn't do it say it was one of the funniest things that everhappened in Homeburg, but I couldn't see it at the time. I was one ofthe rushers. Lyla waited until my outstretched hand was within reachingdistance, and then she pulled a lorgnette on me. Say, Jim, did you everget right squarely in range of both barrels of an honest-for-Godlorgnette with about a thousand dollars worth of dry goods and a pinchof brains behind it? If my turn ever comes to face a Gatling gun I hopeto march right up to it like a little man--but lorgnettes? No! Anyhostile army could lick Homeburg by aiming lorgnettes at it. I gave onelook at the thing and fell over myself in heaps getting away. I wouldn'tspeak to Sim Bone for a week because he laughed. But after I hadrecovered a little, I hunted up Chet Frazier in a hurry and told himLyla wanted to see him. By that I got even with Chet for about a dozenpractical jokes. When he got in range of that lorgnette, he said "Gosh!"and actually ran. Then we survivors lined up and got some comfort out ofit, watching the rest get theirs. 

As I said, Lyla and one or two others who have brought home theirprosperous and expanded corporal beings, and nothing else to speak of, have made us a little timid about greeting our successful Prods. We hangaround all ready for action, but we need encouragement. We wouldn'tspeak first for a farm. We wait for some calloused gabbler to break theice. Gibb Ogle usually does it. Gibb would act as a reception committeefor the Angel Gabriel without a quiver. He's always on the street, anyway, propping up some building or other, and he is always willing towaddle up to a returned governor or financier or rising young businessman, and stick out his unwashed paw, while we hold our breath and waitfor the result. 

As a rule it's cheering. Our Homeburg boys don't fall down once intwenty times. No matter who the visitor is, he grabs Ogle's hand andyells: "Why, hello, Gibb, you fat old scoundrel, how's your sore foot?"Then we crowd around and fight for the next turn, and go home andhastily spread the news that So-and-so has come home big and prosperousas all get-out, and not spoiled a bit. 

Sometimes they don't come back at all, of course, and nervy scouts wholook up the delinquents in their city offices come back with badlyfrosted ears and spread the warning. But there are few of these. EvenPresident Banks of the great F. C. & L. Railroad System, who played onthe Homeburg baseball nine thirty-five years ago, will stop puzzlingover the financial situation long enough to give the glad hand to aHomeburg man during office hours. Of course I don't mean that any onefrom Homeburg can break in on him and pile his desk full of feet. Youhave to be a thirty-third degree Homeburger from his standpoint; thatis, you or your father must have stolen apples with him--I belong to theinner lodge. My father and President Banks ate a peck of peaches onenight in Frazier's orchard, between them, and got half way through thepearly gates before they were yanked back by two doctors. That's whyBanks took me to lunch when I went to call on him last month. If theGovernment would let him, he'd give me a pass home. 

I'll never forget the day when Banks came back to Homeburg. He hadn'tbeen back for thirty years and hadn't the slightest intention of comingeither, as he admitted afterward. But he was going through on hisspecial car, and old Number Eleven, which was hauling him, performed themost intelligent act of its career. The engine broke down right at thedepot, and when Banks found he was in for an hour or two, he got out andstrolled down Main Street to see the town in which he had begun hislife. 

It was a most depressing occasion. No one who had ever come back hadchanged as much as Banks. If he had worn a pigtail and talked Choctaw, he couldn't have grown farther away. It wasn't his fault. He tried hisbest. But he hadn't talked our language for years. He couldn't get downnear enough to converse. He passed most of his playmates withoutremembering them, but when he saw Pash Wade's sign, he went in and shookhands with him. About forty of us came in to trade and watched him doit. It was pathetic. They stood there like strangers from differentlands, Banks trying to unbutton his huge, thick ulster of dignity, andnot succeeding, and Pash trying to say something that would interestBanks--along the line of high finance of course--state of the country, etc. They gave it up in a minute, and Banks went out. He found PeltyAmthorne and shook hands with him. Pelty is pretty loquacious as a rule, but he couldn't talk to Banks--not that Banks, anyway. He'd never seenhim before. He said "How-dy-do, " and, "It's a long time since you werehere, " and Banks said, "It is indeed. I hope you and your family arewell. " And then Pelty oozed hastily back into the crowd with a relievedair as if he had done his duty, and Banks looked bored and took out hiswatch. But just then Sim Askinson came up all out of breath and burstthrough the crowd. 

Sim is little and meek and has a hard time holding his own, even in ourpeaceful world. But when he saw Banks, he snorted like a war horse andgrew up three inches. 

"Hello, Pudge, you old son-of-a-gun!" he said, with both hands in hispockets. 

"Hello, Sim!" said Banks, sort of startled. 

"Where'd you come from?" demanded Sim, "and why ain't you come before?You're a nice friendly cuss, you are. Sucked any turkey eggs lately?"

"No, you knock-kneed dishwasher, " said Banks as a grin began to edge itsway across his face. "Have you tried to sell any more toads forbullfrogs?"

"No, nor I ain't fought out any bumble-bees' nest since the time you gotone up your pant leg and pretty near pounded yourself to death with aball bat, " said Sim. "Can you still run as fast as the time Wert Payleyand I dared you to ride Malstead's bull?"

"Where's Wert?" demanded Banks. They were shaking hands now, using allfour of them. "Say, I've got to see him and Wim. Horn. I've got to leavein a few minutes. "

"Like fun you have, " growled Sim, linking arms with Banks. "You seem tothink some one's chasing you. You're going to stay all night, that'swhat you're going to do. "

"I am not, " said Banks; "and I wouldn't stay with you, anyway. You had agarter snake in the bed last time I slept with you. I've got to see somemore of the boys, though. "

"He thinks he's going away in a few minutes, " said Sim to Wert Payley, who had heard his name and was now shaking hands with Banks. "Why, theold fat snide, nobody wants to see him outside of Homeburg. He's goingto get a free supper to-night. Remember Sadie Warren?"

"Remember!" shouted Banks. "What do you think I am?--Methuselah? Iremember more things than you ever heard of. Why, Sadie and I wentskating the night you couldn't find your fat horse and sleigh. "

"Ya-a-a--" yelled Payley, with a sudden shriek of laughter. "Never knewwho took your rig, did you, Sim?"

"You--you--" said Sim, glaring at Banks. "You confounded horse thief, Ibelieve you took Sadie in my own sleigh. "

"Ain't he bright, Pudge, " gasped Payley, "only took him thirty years tocatch on. "

"Well, Banksie, " said Sim, "Sadie's been more particular about heryoung men since that night. We've been married twenty-five years, and Iguess I'll let you come up and eat this evening, anyway. She lets mebring most any old pelter home. "

"Gosh, boys, I can't. "

"Say, what are you? the porter on that varnished car down there?"demanded Sim. "Won't they let you off a minute?"

"Tell you what we'll do, " said Pelty Amthorne. "We'll take you to bandpractice to-night. Sim still runs it, but he won't let me play anymore. "

"I haven't touched a horn since I left Homeburg, " laughed Banks. "ButI'd give ten dollars to see you and Wimble Horn blat away on those altosagain, with your eyes bulging out of your cheeks. "

"We'll get Wimble and we'll break up band practice if you'll stay over. "

"I--"

"No, you don't, " said Sim. "I won't have riff-raff loafing around myband. "

"You won't, eh?" said Banks. "We'll show you. Come down to the car whileI send about forty telegrams, and then we'll fix you, Mister Askinson. "

Which they did that night, while most of the town looked on. The nextfall Banks came back and stayed three days, and his conduct and that ofhis old companions in crime set an example to our younger generationwhich didn't wear off for years. They went out orchard robbing in anautomobile, and Banks said he never realized before the wonder of modernconveniences. 

VII

THE HOMEBURG WEEKLY DEMOCRAT

_Which Swamps the Post-Office Every Friday_

No, Jim, as I have already said about thirty-four times this week, Idon't care for a paper. Don't buy one for me. I could read your New Yorkpapers for twenty-four hours at a stretch, and at the end of the time Iwould have to stop some good-natured looking chap and ask what the newswas. It's all there, I know, but I don't seem able to find it. Even theChicago baseball scores are hidden in the blamed things. Instead ofputting them first, the way they ought to, they stick them down at theend of the page. As for the editorial pages, I might as well go toLabrador and hunt for personal friends as to read them. If there'sanything that makes a stranger feel about ten thousand miles from home, with the cars not running, it is to get into the editorial page of anunknown newspaper and try to sit in with the family discussions. Itmakes me feel like a man who has gotten into a reunion of the OldSettlers' Association of Zanzibar by mistake. 

It's not much of a trick to go into a strange town and learn to navigatefrom hotel to hotel, but it's a hopeless task to try to find your wayaround a strange newspaper. Takes about two years to learn to read astrange newspaper skilfully, anyway, and find your way through itwithout banging into the want ads when you want to find the editorials, and tripping over the poets' column when you are hunting for the cropreports. You've been buying a paper every time you turned a corner forthe last week, Jim--you New Yorkers seem to have to have a paper aboutas often as a whale needs a new lungful of air--and I've taken a hastylook at all of them, but when I get home I am going to ask my wife whathas happened in the U. S. While I've been away from Homeburg. Outside ofthe eternal Mexican case, I don't seem to have discovered a thing. 

Mind you, I don't blame your papers for bearing down hard on the localnews. I suppose it's mighty interesting to you New Yorkers to learnevery morning just how much more money you owe on your new subway, andwhether or not the temperature of Mrs. Van Damexpense's second-bestSiberian wolf-hound is still rising. That's what newspapers are for--tosave you the trouble of stepping around and collecting the events of theday from the back fence. But your papers don't bear down hard enough onthe Homeburg happenings, and that's why they don't suit me. 

I don't pretend that our Homeburg paper is the equal of yours in anyparticular. The best I can say for it is that it's no worse than it wasten years ago. It hasn't any three-story type, and you could read it foryears without discovering who was being divorced in San Francisco ormurdered in Chicago. People who depend on it don't know yet that war hasbeen declared in the Balkans, and they won't hear any more politicsuntil 1916. All week long I think as little about the paper as all this. But somehow, when Thursday evening comes around, rain or shine, I stepover to the post-office, and if my paper isn't there, I wait a fewminutes, growing more impatient all the time, and then I drift over tothe door of the _Homeburg Weekly Democrat_ office and join the silentthrong. 

Like as not I'll find twenty people there. We don't expect any wildnews. There will probably not be anything in the _Democrat_ when itcomes out, but we want to make sure of it. We don't want to go homewithout the paper. We've read it for twenty years, and every week weopen it up and poke through its internals after a sensation that willstand Homeburg on its ear and split the Methodist church from steeple topipe organ. We're as patient as fishers in the Seine, and the fact thatthe world has never rocked when the _Democrat_ did come out doesn'tdiscourage us any. 

We want our paper, and so we stand there and grumble. Now and then oneof us stumps up the narrow hallway to the second story where the_Democrat_ makes its lair, and looks on with an abused air while twoyoung lady compositors claw around the bottom of the boxes for enoughtype to set the last items, and the foreman stuffs the forms of the lasttwo pages with old boiler plate, medicine ads and anything that willfill. There isn't any reason for the _Democrat_ being late any morethan there is for the branch accommodation train, which got almost totown on time once and stood beyond the crossing for twenty minutesbecause her conductor forgot just when she was due and didn't want torun in too soon. The _Democrat_ is just late naturally. It's part of itsfunction to be late. Makes it more eagerly sought after. We talk withthe foreman and make nuisances of ourselves generally, and presently oldman Ayers, who runs the paper, waddles in with another item to be set. The compositors set down their sticks with a jerk and say, "Oh, myland!" and the foreman goes and puts the item on the case with that airof patient resignation which is a little more irritating than a swiftkick; and then Chet Frazier, if he's hanging around, which he usuallyis, speaks up:

"For goodness' sakes, Ayers, let that item go and get to press, " hesays. "Give it to me and I'll read it aloud down-stairs, your wholesubscription list's down there waiting. "

But we have to wait just the same until the item is set up. Then theforeman locks up the forms and bangs them on the face with his bigwooden plane, and he and the old man lug them out into the pressroomwhile we all hold our breath--sometimes the form explodes on the way andthen we don't get the _Democrat_ for three days. 

Pretty soon we hear the rattle-te-bang-te-clank-te-clicketty-clang ofthe old press, and in five minutes more Editor Ayers comes out with anarmful of folded papers all fragrant with fresh black ink. 

[Illustration: "She's out, boys, " he says. ]

"She's out, boys, " he says. Then we grab copies and hurry to spread thenews of the birth of another _Democrat_. We open the sheet and lookcarefully down the page where old man Ayers generally conceals his localnews. For a minute or two there is silence. Then somebody crams hispaper into his pocket. "Hmph, nothing in it, " he says, and starts home. 

He's right, too. Outside of the fact that it has another week of old manAyers's laborious and worried life in it, it is mighty bare. There isn'tenough news in it to cause a thrill in a sewing circle. But after supperat home, when we look it over more carefully and the first hot flush ofanticipation has worn off, we do find a lot of information. We find thatMiss Ollie Mingle has gone to Paynesville for a two days' visit (aha, that Paynesville young man's folks are going to look her over), and thatMrs. Ackley is visiting her daughter in Ogallala, Neb. (Unless Ackleystraightens up, we don't expect her back. ) Wimble Horn is erecting a newporch and painting his house. (He must have beaten the bucket shop foronce. ) We also find that Jedson Bane's peaches are ripe and of the bestquality, which fact he has just proven to the editor's entiresatisfaction. And that old Mrs. Gastit is feeling very poorly, and PeteParson, while working on his automobile the other night, contributed aforefinger to the cause of gasoline by poking around in the cogs whilethe engine was running. 

All of this is news and interesting to us; so is the fact that Miss RiHawkes is not teaching in the Snyder district school this week, becauseof a sore toe. While this item does not jar the country quite soextensively as it would if Miss Hawkes belonged to one of your leadingNew York families, and was employing an eleven-thousand-dollar physicianto treat her for gout, it is just as important to Miss Hawkes. And thereyou have the great keynote of our Homeburg journalism. In the eyes ofthe _Democrat_ we are all equal. 

There are not many of us Homeburgers. We will never see twenty-fivehundred again, for as families grow smaller, most of the Illinois townslike Homeburg are contracting slowly in size even while prosperous. The_Democrat_ hasn't above seven hundred subscribers, but every one ofthose subscribers gets his name in the paper at least once a year, evenif it is only a general mention of his patriotism when he pays hisannual subscription. No baby born in Homeburg is too humble to get itsexact weight heralded to the world through the _Democrat_. Mrs. Maloney's pneumonia and Banker Payley's quinsy grieve the town in thesame paragraph under the heading "Among our sick. " The Widow Swanson'sten-mile trip down the line to a neighboring town gets as carefulattention as Mrs. Singer's annual pilgrimage to California. In thematter of news we are a pure democracy. The man who buys a newautomobile gets no more space than the member of Patrick McQuinn'ssection crew who scores a clean scoop by digging his potatoes one weekahead of the town. And when the humblest of us lies down in death hedoes it with the serene consciousness that he will get half a column, anyway, with more if his disease is rare and interesting, and that atthe end of the article the city will sympathize with the family in itsbereavement. When Mrs. Agnew died of her broken hip she got a column, though she had been financially unable to take the paper for years, while in the same issue Jay Gould got a two-inch obituary in its boilerplate inside. 

Your big papers pride themselves on their brevity, except in murdercases, and I understand that almost every New York editor thinks hecould boil the story of the Creation down into less than the six hundredwords which the Bible wasted on it. But Editor Ayers could give all youreditors instructions in this kind of economy. If the Creation hadhappened around Homeburg while he was on the job, he would have calledattention to it the next week about as follows:

"We understand there was a creation in these parts during the last week. We did not learn the particulars but those who were on the ground at thetime say that it was a successful affair, and that the new world isdoing as well as could be expected under the circumstances. "

Ayers would write it this way for two reasons. In the first place hehates to write more than one paragraph. Coming after a hard day's workcollecting bills and chasing subscribers, it is a wearing effort. Nothing gets much space in the _Democrat_ except obituaries andmarriages, and they are all contributed--the former by the relatives andthe latter by the minister. In the second place, there wouldn't be anyuse of wasting a lot of space on a big item because by the time the_Democrat_ comes out, everybody knows all about it, and the mere factswould be stale and unimportant beside the superstructure of soaringfancy which has been built up by the easy-running imaginations of ourchief news dispensers on the street corners. And so, when the creameryburns down or the evening fast freight runs through an accommodation onthe crossing, the old man puts his duty off until the last minute andthen writes a few well-chosen lines merely to let us know that he is onthe job and lets no news escape him. When you are running a weeklypaper, your competitors in the news business are the talkers in the townwho mingle seven days a week and issue a hundred thrilling extras totheir fellow citizens before your press day comes around. 

Besides, as I have said, old man Ayers can't afford to waste much timechasing news. He has to get a living for himself as well as for the_Democrat_, and keeping both his family and the paper alive is adistinct feat performed weekly. His pay-roll for a foreman and twogirls must amount to over fifteen dollars a week, and that means coldsolid cash which must be wrung from a reluctant public. Seems to me Inever go into a store that I don't see old man Ayers trying to collect alittle cash on an advertising account or wheedling a subscriber intocoming out of the misty past and creeping cautiously down a few yearstoward the present on his subscription account. If there is anythingwhich we can't do without and for which we positively object to payingreal money, it is our home newspaper. Sim Bone has a roaring shoebusiness and pays cash for his automobiles, but he has often told methat paying good paper money for advertising would be as wasteful aseating it. He carries an ad in the _Democrat_ all the year and changesit about every six months. It's July now, and he is still advertisingbargains in overshoes--but he won't pay any money. Ayers has to tradethe account out, as he has to do with every other advertiser in thetown. 

People pity the poor ministers' families who have to live on thescrambled proceeds of donation parties, but an editor's family in ourparts has even harder luck. I have seen Ayers order two suits of clothesfrom a clothier who owed him a big bill and was getting wabbly, and thenpass by the meat market empty-handed, because his advertising accountthere was traded out. He told me once that he has taken disk-plows, flaxseed, magazines, encyclopedias and a new back porch in trade foradvertising and subscriptions, but that he has been wearing an obsoletepair of spectacles, to his great discomfort, for ten years, because ourlocal jeweler will not advertise. The doctors in town carry cards in thepaper and owe him large amounts because his family is too healthy tocatch up with them; but it will be two years before either of our localdentists accumulates a big enough bill to allow Mrs. Ayers to have somevery necessary construction and betterment work, as the railroad folkssay, done to her teeth. 

If it weren't for the patent medicine ads, Ayers tells me, he wouldn'tbe able to keep afloat for want of ready cash. He says a patent medicinemay be an abomination before the Lord, but that a patent medicineadvertising agent looks to him like a very present help in time oftrouble. The agent comes in and beats him down until he agrees topublish several hundred yards of notices next to pure reading matter onall sides for fifteen dollars. But the fifteen dollars is cash--hedoesn't have to take the stuff in trade. And so we are forever runninginto such thrilling headlines as, "Horrible Wreck, " "Her escape wassimply marvelous, " "Worse than the Titanic Disaster, " in the_Democrat's_ local page. And then we exclaim: "Hurray! Real news atlast, " and prowl eagerly down the items only to find that the horriblewreck was a citizen of Swamp Hollow upon whom a wonderful cure waseffected; that "Her escape" was from inflammatory rheumatism by the aidof Gettem's Dead Shot Specific, and that the Titanic Disaster iseclipsed annually by the sad ends of thousands of people who neglect totake Palaver's Punk Pills. It always makes us mad, but we can't kick. Ifit weren't for the patent medicine people, we would have to pay for the_Democrat_ all by ourselves. 

They say that when Editor Ayers first came to Homeburg some forty yearsago he was a bright young man with a great rush of words from the pen, and that he had a dapper air and was generally admired. The _Democrat_contained about a page of solid editorial opinion each week oneverything, from the tariff to the duty of Russia, in whatever crisiswas then pending, and people swore by the paper and didn't make uptheir opinions until they had read it. But times have changed. We don'tstand in awe of the _Democrat_ any more. Most of us laugh at it, eventhose of us who are not financiers enough to keep our subscriptionscalled up. We call it the "Weekly Gimlet" and the "Poorly Democrat, " andwe make bright remarks to old man Ayers when he asks us for news andtell him that he ought to turn the paper inside out so that we can readthe boiler plate first and not have to wade through his stuff. But hedoesn't object. Time and toil and the worry of keeping cash enough onhand to pay the expressman who dumps his ready prints on the floor eachWednesday and refuses to budge until he has collected $3. 24 have takenthe pepper out of him. He doesn't write editorials any more except onthe week following a national election, and they are affairs of dutywhich always begin: "Another election has come and gone and the partyof Jackson--"

He has made a living for forty years and has sent two sons throughcollege from the _Democrat_, and the effort has taken the fight out ofhim. I never saw him resent a joke but once. That was when PeltyAmthorne told him that his wife considered the _Democrat_ to be the bestpaper she had ever seen. He let Ayers burst a couple of buttons from hisvest in his swelling pride before he explained that the _Democrat_, whencut in two, exactly fitted his wife's pantry shelves, and that shedidn't have to trim it a bit. The old man turned on his heel without aword and that week he kindled his old-time fires and wrote the followingfor the local page:

A citizen of Homeburg who hasn't done anything more exciting for twentyyears than stand off his grocery bill poked fun at the _Democrat_ lastweek to our face because there wasn't any more news in it. News, saywe--News in Homeburg? News in a town where an ice-cream social is asensation and a dog fight suspends business for three hours? News in atown where it takes a couple five years to work up a wedding and sevenkinds of wedding cake is the only news in it? Where the city marshalhasn't made an arrest for two years because no one has done anythingafter nine P. M. Except snore, and where they have to put up the lamps inpairs to keep them from getting lonesome? We don't print news fromHomeburg because there isn't any, and the old rooster who joshed usknows it. He's sore because we can't make half a column out of his tripto Paynesville eight miles away last summer, but we'll promise to dobetter. We'll dump the paste pot in the fire, throw the old shears outof the window and get out a regular screamer of a _Democrat_ some week;a paper with red ink on it and big headlines and a real piece of news init. We will when this gabby old fossil does his part. When he pays hissix years' subscription, we'll write two columns about it. And even thenno one will believe it. 

Lafe Simpson, who runs the _Argus_, is a younger man than Ayers and moreambitious. Oh, yes, we have two papers. In a town the size of Homeburgyou simply have to have two papers, because half of the people arealways mad at one paper. The _Argus_ and _Democrat_ trade subscriptionlists about every seven years--not counting the hard-shell Democrats andblown-in-the-bottle Republicans who have to stand by their paperswhether they get mad at them or not. I've been taking the _Democrat_ forabout five years because Simpson got too busy in the school election oneyear to suit me. It's pretty hard on me, because Simpson runs a betterpaper; but my neighbor, Sim Askinson, likes the _Democrat_ better andcan't take it because he took his whole family to Chicago one week, andAyers overlooked the fact. So he borrows my _Democrat_ every week and Iget his _Argus_, and thus both of us preserve our mad and our dignityand get what we want just the same. 

If there's anything keener than the competition between two weeklynewspapers in a small town, I'd like to see it--but not feel it. It's asearching sort of competition which seems to work its way into everydetail of the town's affairs. We town people are judged by our editorsaccording to our patronage. If a man gives two jobs of letterheads insuccession to the _Argus_, Ayers looks on him as a man who has stabbedhim in the back and has twisted the sword. If the Board of Educationspends $67 for commencement invitations with the _Democrat_ one year and$69. 50 with the _Argus_ the next, things aren't exactly calm andpeaceable again until the discrimination has been explained. When twinscome to a man who has always taken the _Argus_ in preference to the_Democrat_, old man Ayers wags his head as if to say, "He brought it onhimself;" and when Lafe Simpson meets a man who persistently refuses totake his paper in preference to the sheet across the street, he greetshim as formally and warily as if he had smallpox and was passing freesamples around. 

Lafe claims to have more circulation than the _Democrat_, and this comesnearer giving Ayers apoplexy than anything else. He claims that Lafe'scirculation consists two thirds of wind and that he hasn't more than 750bona fide subscribers, including deadhead copies to patent medicinehouses. Lafe, on the other hand, says Ayers prints 750 papers merelyfrom force of habit--that most of his subscribers have been trying tostop the paper for years and can't. Lafe says that when a man puts hisname on Ayers's subscription list, he might as well carve it in stoneand then try to wipe it off with gasoline. Ayers says, in return, thatwhen a stranger arrives to make his home in Homeburg, Lafe Simpson meetshim at the train, takes him to his new residence, and hangs around thedoorstep until the stranger subscribes for the _Argus_ in order toimprove the atmosphere around the neighborhood. 

Of course the two papers are always on opposite political sides--nomatter whether it is a school or national election. Makes us scheme agood deal at times to keep one of them quiet on some public project sothat the other will not jump on it. We had a big time, when the plan topave Main Street was going through, to keep Lafe from jumping in andshouting for it. That would have set Ayers off dead against it, and wehad to muzzle Lafe until Ayers had committed himself. 

The struggles of the two editors to outdo each other have been titanic. When Simpson put in a steam engine, Ayers mortgaged his plant and gotone of the new gasoline engines just then being introduced into anunhappy world. He never used it much unless he had lots of time in whichto start it, but it was a great comfort and held Simpson level. WhenSimpson bought the building in which the _Argus_ is printed, it nearlykilled Ayers, who couldn't have bought the sign on his building. But hefinally prevailed on the owner to put in a new front and name his block"The Democrat Building. " But about that time Simpson, who is a go-aheadyoung chap, bought a young automobile in the last stage of lung trouble, and Ayers has never really recovered from that blow. 

The two papers go to press on the same day, and the rivalry is intense. Early in the day the two foremen each visit the rival plants, ostensiblyto borrow some type and a little gasoline, but in reality to count theadvertisements and to see how late the rival sheet is going to be. Allafternoon the forces work feverishly, reports drifting in occasionallyto the effect that over in the other shop they are locking up the forms. The minute the press turns in the _Democrat_ office, Ayers grabs thefirst paper, folds it and saunters hastily over toward the _Argus_. Sometimes he meets Simpson half way over with a copy of the _Argus_ inhis pocket, and sometimes he gets clear over and has a chance to swellaround for a minute with his new-born paper in plain sight, watching themad foreman lock up the forms. The first paper into the post-office getsdistributed first, while the subscribers of the other paper hang aroundin a state of frenzy and waver in their allegiance in a manner to makethe stoutest heart quail. And one of the weekly diversions in Homeburgis watching this race. If it isn't too late in starting, we hang aroundand make mild bets on the result. One week old man Ayers and hisforeman will hurry out from the _Democrat_ office and trot hastily overto the post-office carrying the week's issue of the paper between themin a wash basket. And the next week Simpson and the office devil willbeat them to it. Now and then they will both appear at the same time andrace side by side, bareheaded, coatless, breathless, and full of hate. Ihear a good deal about the exertions to which your papers go to be onthe street first with extras, but I'll bet there has never been morevoltage in the competition here than there was in Homeburg the night oldman Ayers and young Simpson arrived at the post-office door at preciselythe same second and got their baskets and themselves in a hopeless jam. Postmaster Flint had to appoint a peace conference to settle thedispute. 

Ayers is getting pretty old, and for several years we have been worryingabout his future. Since a cruel Government has decided that a newspaperpublisher must keep his subscription list paid up or go out of business, times have been pretty hard for Ayers; formerly he could let asubscription account run for ten years and then take a second-hand buggyor a quarter of beef, or a few odd size grindstones on account; but oflate he has had to dun us every year, and of course that makes us mad, and we quit his paper with great frequency and vim. I don't know whatwould have happened to the old man if Wilson hadn't been elected. Butthat, of course, has settled things for him. He will be our nextpostmaster. Every one has conceded that except Pash Wade, EmeryBillings, Colonel Ackley, and Sim Askinson, who are also candidates. However, old man Ayers's petition is as long as all the rest puttogether, and when he is appointed and begins to draw down fifteenhundred dollars a year for handing out his own paper to hissubscribers, we will sigh with relief, and Simpson's yells will be sweetmusic in our ears. 

If I had my way, I would put a clause in the Constitution giving allthird-class postmasterships to third-class editors, anyway. It's theonly chance they have of accumulating enough of a surplus to be able togo into a store with their hats on one side and buy things like otherpeople. 

VIII

THE HOMEBURG MARINE BAND

_Where Music is Cherished for its own Sweet Sake Regardless ofDividends_

Where you New Yorkers get farthest ahead of us Homeburgers, Jim, is thefact that you can go out and soak yourself in real, soul-hoisting musicwhenever you feel like it--provided, of course, that you have the priceand that some speculator hasn't cornered the tickets, and that you canget home at night in time to get dressed in time to go back to town, andthat you have sufficient nerve and endurance to go four rounds with yourcelebrated subway in the same twenty-four hours. 

You can't realize what having music constantly on tap means to apilgrim from a town where two concerts in a winter is a gorge, and whereabout the only regular musical diversion is going to church on Sundaymorning and betting on where the veteran soprano in the choir is goingto hang on to the key or skid on the high turns. You laugh at me becauseI can't eat down-town unless I am encouraged by a bull fiddle, andbecause I gulp at free concert tickets like a young robin swallowingworms. But if most of your life had been spent listening to Mrs. SimEstabrook jumping for middle C about as successfully as a dog jumps fora squirrel in a hickory tree, you'd splash around in melody, too, whileyou had the chance. 

Of course, I don't mean to say that the music canneries don't do as biga business out our way as they do anywhere. I'll bet they ship as muchas ten barrels of assorted masterpieces a month into Homeburg for ourgraphophone cranks; and last winter Wimble Horn broke the piano-playerrecord by tramping out Tannhäuser in seven minutes flat. But while thesethings educate us and enable us to roll our eyes in the right place in aWagner number, they don't satisfy the soul any more than souvenir cardsfrom Europe take away a thirst for travel. We want the real thing, andyear in and out we're music-hungry. We drive our young folks to thepiano and listen to them heroically until they get good, and then theygo away to the city where the gate receipts are better and leave us atLutie Briggs's mercy again. Time and time again the only thing that hasstood between Homeburg and a ghastly musical silence has been theHomeburg Marine Band. 

That's right! Laugh, darn you! What if Homeburg is twenty miles from thenearest creek? Our band is a lot nearer salt water than your Café deParis is to France. And, besides, there are only three names for acountry band, anyway. If it isn't the Marine Band, it has to be theMilitary Band, or the Silver Cornet Band. Chet Frazier, who is ourvillage cut-up, says that they named ours the Marine Band years ago, after it had waded out to the cemetery on a wet Memorial Day through ourcelebrated bottomless roads. 

You can't realize what a comfort and pride a band is in a Class X town, unless you have grown up in one. They say this isn't a musical country, but its intentions are certainly good as far as brass bands go. Longbefore an American town is big enough to have a post-office, itscitizens have either organized a brass band or are trying to get anotherman to move in to complete a quorum. Life never gets so complicated outon the grain elevator circuit that the station agent, school principal, and the two rival blacksmiths, and the city marshal can't lug theirhorns down-town once a week in the evening and soar sweetly off intomelody at band practice--that is, if they can get off on the same beatduring the evening. 

I can hear our home band now--up over McMuggins' Drug Store on a summerevening. It's hot--not hot enough to ignite the woodwork, but plentywarm enough to fry eggs on the sidewalks--and the whole town is out onthe porches and lawns chasing a breeze, except the band. It is up in thesuper-heated lodge room of the Modern Woodmen, huddled around two oillamps, because the less light it has the less heat will be generated, and it is getting ready to practice the "Washington Post March" for theFourth of July parade. Our band has practiced the "Washington PostMarch" for over twenty years, but while the band has altered greatly, the grand old piece shows no sign of wear and is as fresh andunconquerable as ever. 

Querulous, complaining sounds come from the lodge room. The tenor hornsare crooning, and the bass horn blatting gently, while the clarionetplayers are chasing each other up and down the scale, like squirrelsrunning round and round in a cage. The warming-up exercises are on. Theywill continue until Frank Sundell shaves his last customer and gets upto the hall with his trombone. You can tell when he comes. He pulls theslide in and out a couple of times with an unearthly chromatic grunt, and then there is a deep, pregnant silence. They are going to begin. 

Usually they begin several times. It is as hard to get a band offtogether in practice as it is to send a dozen horses from the wire. Butfinally the bass catches up with the cornets, and the others sprint orput on the brakes, and they land on the fourth or fifth beat together. 

For a few minutes it's great. They go over the first four bars in abunch, and old Dobbs gets the half note and change of key in the bass, which usually floors him, like a professional. It is a proud and happymoment for the leader. But it doesn't last. It's too good to be true. AdSmith strikes a falsetto with his cornet and stops for wind; thisrattles his partner, who can't carry the air alone to save him. Dobbssits down on the wrong key in the bass. The tenors weaken, discouragedby the cornet, and everybody hesitates. A couple of clarionets lose theplace and get to wandering around at random, creating terrible havoc. The altos stop, being in doubt. Ad recovers and launches out withterrific vim half a beat behind. There is a rally, but it is too late. You can hear fragments of five different keys, and presently every onestops except Mahlon Brown, who plays the bass drum and always bangs awaythrough fire or water until some one turns him off. 

Then there is silence--a good deal of it. We all know what ishappening. Sim Askinson, the leader, is making a few well-chosenremarks, and each player is turning around in his chair and going overthe faults of his neighbor in the most kindly and thorough fashion. EdSmith empties out his baritone horn and takes a little practice run, andthen they commence to begin--or begin to start--or start tocommence--whatever it is, all over again. But when they stop at teno'clock, they haven't played the "Washington Post March" clear throughin any one heat. 

Doesn't sound encouraging for the Fourth, does it? But, pshaw, that'sonly practice! When the big day comes and the boys put on their caps andcoats and such trousers as will come nearest to blending with the saidcoats and march down the street, do they falter and blow up in the backstretch? Not much. They canter through that air as if they had been bornwhistling it. There's a wonderful inspiration in marching to a bandman--give him a horn, a ragged slip of music, and about four miles ofroad, and he will prance down the street, climbing over ruts, wadingthrough mud, reading at night by the light of a torch carried by a boywho is twenty feet away fighting with another boy; and he will blow hisimmortal soul into his horn for hours at a stretch without missing anote. 

Part of the reason for the difference at home is because we always carrya few amateurs, who are privileged to come in at practice and do all thedamage they can, but who have to keep mighty quiet on the march. Theycan carry their horns, puff out their cheeks and look as grand as theyplease, but if they'd presume to cut loose with some real notes andsmear up a piece, they'd be fired in no time. 

We have always been mighty proud of our Homeburg band. Nobody knows howold it is. We think it arrived with the first inhabitants. These areall dead, but some of the original horns are still doing duty, and thebrass on them is worn thin and almost bright. Our band is much betterthan the average band. That's one of the great Homeburg comforts. Whenever we get blue about the muddy streets and the small stores, andthe great need of a sewage system, and the disgraceful condition of thestove in the Q. B. & C. Depot, we think of our band and are comforted. It has at least twenty members right along, most of whom can play theirinstruments, and Sim Askinson, who is a professional music teacher, hasconducted it off and on for twenty-five years. Citizens from other townsget mighty jealous when they come down to Homeburg Thursday eveningsduring the summer and listen to the magnificent concerts which our bandgives. I've seen as many as three hundred rigs around the public squarethose nights. And when our band practices up on "Poet and Peasant, "which is its star piece, and goes off to the big band contests whichbreak loose in the summer and create great havoc, large numbers of ourcitizens go along and bet their good money in a manner which keeps thetown poor for months afterward. 

I don't know anything more magnificent than the way our band plays "Poetand Peasant" with Sim Askinson leading, Ad Smith and Henry Aultmeyerduetting perfectly for once with their cornets, and the clarionetsection eating up the fast parts in a manner that sends goose flesh upand down your spine. We're head and shoulders above any other band thatenters the contests, but that's the trouble. The judges are nevereducated up to "Poet and Peasant. " They always give the prize to thePaynesville Military Band, which has a five-foot painted bass drum andhas to play "Over the Waves" for a concert piece, because they haven'tgot a decent cornet player in town. Sometime they will get a realmusician to judge these contests, and then we will win by seventeentoots. 

You may not believe it, Jim, but I am an alumnus of the Homeburg band. Didn't suspect that I was anything but an ordinary citizen, did you? Butit's a fact. I am a band man. I'm too modest to brag about it, but I wascarrying a horn and had a uniform before I was eighteen. I suppose thereis nothing, not even the fire department, that fills a small town boywith such wild ambition as a band. When I was twelve, I used to watchthat band in its more sublime passages, feeling that if I ever couldbecome great enough to play in it, others could run the country and winits great battles with no jealousy from me. The snare drummer at thattime was a boy of sixteen. Of course, being snare drummer in the band, he didn't mix around much with the common kids, and I didn't know him. But I watched him until my ribs swelled out and cracked with envy; and Iused to wonder how fortune ever happened to reach down and yank thatparticular boy so far up into the rarefied upper regions of glory. 

When I was fourteen, I went after his job. But I never could learn toplay the snare drum. You have to learn to "roll, " and I couldn't make myleft hand behave. I tried a year and would probably be trying yet butfor the fact that when Ed Norton left town, he traded me his ruinous oldalto horn for three dollars and a dog. There was about as much musicleft in it as there is in a fish horn, but I was as delighted as if ithad been a pipe organ, and when the folks wouldn't let me practice athome on it, I took it out in the country and kept it in Smily Garrett'sbarn. After a while I learned how to fit my face into the mouthpiece injust the right way, and as the sounds I made became more human, I sortof edged into town, until finally I was practicing in our own barn. Andthe next year Askinson let me come into the band and "pad" as secondalto during the less important engagements. 

I played with the band for five years, and while I never got out of the"thump section, " which was what the trombonists and snare drummers andthe other aristocrats of the band call the altos, I had all the fun andadventures that a high-priced musician could have had, and was perfectlyhappy. I can still remember with pride the deep-green looks on the facesof Pete Amthorne and Billy Madigan and Snoozer Ackley, as they watchedme marching grandly down the street lugging my precious old threebushels of brass in my arms, and "ump-umping" until my eyes stuck out ofmy head. Of course they didn't know that most of the time I waswatching a change in my notes half a bar away and wondering if I couldmake it without falling all over the treble clef. I looked like Sousa tothem, and when I leaned grandly back in my chair at the band concertsand borrowed a page of music from my neighbor--said page being mostlyHebrew to me--I felt like a Senator or Chief Justice letting the commonherd have a look at him. 

I pity the poor city boys who have to grow up nowadays and depend ontaxicabs and vaudeville for their excitement. Belonging to the band wasmore fun than belonging to the baseball team or the torchlight brigadeor anything else. We got in on everything. They couldn't pull off arally or celebration, or even a really successful church social, withoutus. I might say that the importance of a Homeburg citizen in the olddays was determined by whether or not the Homeburg Band escorted him tohis tomb. When great doings occurred in the neighboring towns, plaincitizens dug down in their pockets for car-fare, and then dug painfullydown once more for our car-fare. When an ordinary Homeburger wanted tohelp boost McKinley to victory by parading in some distant town with atorch, it cost him five dollars and a suit of clothes. But we not onlywent free, but got two dollars apiece for plowing a wide furrow of glorydown the streets between rows of admiring eyes. 

Those two dollars counted a lot in those days, too. It looked like aneasy income to us. All we had to do to earn it was to beg off from ouremployers for half a day, travel thirty miles or so by train, usuallystanding up and protecting our horns from the careless mob, march eightor ten miles over unknown streets, picking out dry places underfoot andnotes from a piece of music bobbing up and down in the shadows above ourhorns, and then drive home across country after midnight, getting homein time to go to work in the morning. Why, it was just like findingmoney; I've never had so much fun earning it since. I started once tofigure out how many miles our band marched during the first Bryancampaign, but I gave it up. We never felt it at that time, but it mademe so tired counting that I quit with a distinct footsore feeling. 

The most worrisome task about a Homeburg band was keeping it alive. Isuppose all small town bands have the same trials. We worked againstincredible difficulties. If city people had the same devotion to musicwhich we displayed, you would have a ten-thousand-piece philharmonicorchestra in New York playing twenty-four hours a day for glory. We werealways building up our band with infinite pains, only to have Fate jerkthe gizzard out of it just as perfection was in sight. Talent wasscarce, and the rude, heartless city was forever reaching down intoHomeburg and yanking some indispensable players away. Of course therewas always a waiting list of youngsters who would coax a few hoarsetoots out of the alto horn, and we always had a bunch of kidclarionetists who would sail along grandly through the soft parts andthen blow goose notes whenever they hit the solo part. But try as wewould, we could never get more than two cornets. One of these was AdSmith. He was a bum cornetist, but his brother Ed was a good baritone, and we had to have both or none. The other was usually some anxiousyoung student who got along pretty well on plain work, but who wouldcome down the chromatic run in the "Chicago Tribune March" like a fatman falling down the cellar stairs with an oleander plant. 

As for trombones, there was a positive fatality among them; we werealways losing them. Trombone players have to be born, anyway, and therewas no hope of developing one. Besides, the neighbors wouldn't allow it. Young Henry Wood showed promise once, but after his father had listenedto him for about six months, he took the slip end of his horn away fromhim and beat carpets with it, until it was extinct as far as melody wasconcerned. 

For a year we had Mason Peters, who was a wonder on the slide trombone. But he was only getting twelve dollars a week in Snyder's Shoe Emporium, and Paynesville, which never tired of putting up dirty tricks on us, hustled around and got him an eighteen dollar job up there--after whichthey came down to Homeburg at the first opportunity with their band toparade Peters before our eyes. It would have been a grand success ifthey hadn't put Peters in the front row. He lived for his art, Petersdid, paying no attention to anything but his trombone, and besides hewas quite deaf. He got confused about the line of march, and when theband swung around the public square he kept right on up Main Street allalone, playing in magnificent form and solitary grandeur while the bandswung off the other way. The whole town followed him with tears of joy, and he traveled two blocks before he became aware of the vast andappalling silence behind him; then he kept right on for the city limitson the run. It was a great comfort to us, and by the time we had gottenthrough apologizing to the Paynesville boys for following Peters underthe impression that he was the real band, they had offered to fight ussingly or in platoons. 

We used to watch every new citizen like Russian detectives, only wesearched them for horns instead of dynamite. Several times a trombonistcame to town, and music revived noticeably. But none of them lasted. Trombonists seem to be temperamental, and when they are not changingjobs they are resigning from the band because they are not allowed toplay enough solos. Our greatest bonanza was a quiet chap named Williams, who came to town to work in the moulding room of the plow factory. Afterhe had been there a week, we discovered that he had a saxophone. No onehad ever heard or eaten a saxophone, but we looked it up, and when wefound out what it was, we made a rush for him. At the next practice heappeared with a bright silver instrument covered with two bushels ofkeys and played a solo which sounded like three clarionets with thecroup. We wept for joy and elected him leader on the spot. 

This caused Sim Askinson to resign, of course, and he took Ad and EdSmith with him, and they remained in dignified and awful silence for twoyears. But we didn't care. One saxophone was worth five baritones, andwhile Williams was in town, we were an object of envy to all of theother bands around. We changed our name to the Homeburg Saxophone Band, and the way we rubbed it into Paynesville was pitiful. He was a littlefellow, Williams was, and short of wind, which caused him to gasp a gooddeal during the variation parts. But he was willing. There was no shirkabout him. After a year our program usually consisted of elevensaxophone solos and some other piece which could be done almost entirelyon the saxophone, and the jealous Paynesvillains used to ask why we usednineteen men to play the rests when one man could have produced as muchsilence at far less expense. 

Those were glorious years; but of course they didn't last. Williams gotto resigning at the foundry just for the pleasure of having us come downand plead with the proprietor to raise his pay. Finally he resigned somuch that the proprietor fired him, and then we had to take our caps inhand and wheedle the Smiths and Askinson back into the band. I haven'tbelonged for years, but they are still there. When I drop in atpractice, as many of the alumni do, Askinson greets me cordially andtakes some young cub's horn away from him, so I can sit in. It is justlike old times, especially when Ed Smith lays down his horn after aslight altercation with some one and goes home never to come back--justas he has done for the last thirty years. 

That's the worst of music. One's art, you know, has so much influenceover one's temper. To see our band soaring majestically down Main Streetand playing "Canton Halifax" in one great throbbing rough-house ofmelody you would never believe that anything but brotherly love existedbetween the players. As a matter of fact, we never wasted any harmonyamong ourselves. We didn't have any to spare. It took all we had toproduce the music. For twenty-five years the Smiths and Cooney Simpson, who plays first clarionet, have been at swords' points, each with afaction behind him. Cooney says it's a shame that a good band must limpalong with a cornetist who always takes three strikes to hit a highnote, and Ed Smith says Cooney wants to be leader and will not besatisfied until he can play the solo and bass parts at once on hisclarionet. I can see Ed Smith now, after the band has run aground inpractice, taking his horn down and glaring around at Cooney. 

"What you gobstick players need is a time-table, " says he, "instead ofnotes. Come in on the A about eight-fifteen. If you can do that well, we'll try to struggle along. "

"Don't get forte, " Cooney replies cheerfully. "If you'd try to followboth those cornets instead of rambling along by yourself, you'd split, sure. "

"Better play cornet, too, Cooney, " says Ad Smith, whirling around. "You've got enough mouth for both. "

"Well, we ought to have a cornetist, " says Cooney, "it's what we'veneeded for years. "

This riles the scrub cornet player, whoever he happens to be, and hegets up excitedly. "We'd get along a lot better without one or two humancalliopes--" he begins. 

"Set down, set down, " says old Dobbs from the coils of his tuba. "Let'em fight. They know it all between pieces--"

"Who asked you to horn in?" says Ed Smith, getting up preparatory togoing home with his baritone horn and leaving a broken and forlorn worldto grieve his loss. 

Of course this is a crisis. But we never bust up. The Paynesville Bandbusts up about twice a year over the division of profits and the colorof their new uniforms and the old question of whether the cornets ortrombones shall march in front. But we never go entirely to pieces. Thisis largely because of Sam Green. He is our peacemaker and most faithfulplayer. He has played second alto in the band for thirty-five yearswithout a promotion, and is by all odds the worst player I ever saw, being only entirely at home in the key of C; and he can't playthree-four time to save his soul. But his devotion is marvelous. He isalways the first man down to practice. He lights the lamps, builds thefires, and when necessary goes out to Ed Smith's home and persuades himto come back into the band for just this night. And whenever the disputebetween the factions gets to the point where Ed Smith begins gatheringup his doll things, Sam interferes. 

"Come on now, boys, " he pleads, "we've got to get this piece worked up. You're all good players. Why, if Paynesville had you fellows, she'dhave a band. That was my fault that time. I'll get this here thing rightsometime. I'll sit out in the trio now and you fellows take it. "

And pretty soon, as he argues, Ed's proud heart softens, and he comesback with a glare at Cooney. Then Sim Askinson raps on his music rackand says: "Gentlemen and trombone players, " as he has for a quarter of acentury; and a minute later the band is tumbling eagerly through itspiece once more, all feuds suspended in the desperate effort to come outeven at the end with no surplus bars to be played by some flounderinghorn. 

Some time during the evening, as a rule, the various sections gettogether on some passage and swim grandly through, every horn in perfecttime, and the parts blending like Mocha and Java. All differences areforgotten, and the band breaks up with friendly words, Ed Smith andCooney going home together. Music has charms to soothe the savage beast, and it also has a wonderful power of taking the temper out of the grocerand the painter and the mahout of the waterwork's gasoline engine. 

I never stepped so high or felt so grand as I did the first time Imarched out with the boys and went down the street in the back row ofthe band next to the drums, a member in good standing, and dodging everytime I passed under a telephone wire to keep from scraping my cap off. Inever expect to feel that grand again. But I have an ambition. If ever Ishould become so famous and successful that when I went back to Homeburgto visit my proud and happy parents and stepped off of the 4:11 train, Iwould find the Homeburg Marine Band there to meet me, I would know thatI had made good, and I would be content. The only thing that encouragesme in my ambition is that the band didn't come down to play when I wentaway. Do you know, Jim, it's the funniest thing--the fellows we playedout-of-town in a blaze of glory never happened to be the chaps we camedown to the train to meet afterward, somehow. But I imagine we weren'tthe only poor guessers in the world. 

IX

THE AUTO GAME IN HOMEBURG

_It has Driven out Politics as a Subject of Debate_

Wait a minute, Jim. I want to look at this automobile. . . . Yes, I know itis the sixth machine I've walked around in seven blocks, but what's timeto a New Yorker on Saturday afternoon? This nifty little mile-eater hasan electric gear shift, and I want to ask the chauffeur how he likes it. Promised Ad Summers I would. 

. . . Says it hangs a little if his voltage is low. That's what I'd beafraid of--Gee! there's a new Jacksnipe with a center searchlight. Neverwould do for rutty roads. How do you like the wire wheels, Jim? Bad forside strains, I should think. Look at those foxy inset lamps. Listen tothat engine purr--two cycle, I'll bet. Say, Fifth Avenue is certainlyone great street! I could walk up and down here for a month. There's anew Battleax--wonder if those two speed differentials are going to workout. 

All right, Jim, I'll reluctantly shut up and focus my attention on thesalmon-colored cloaks and green stockings for a while. I forgot that youdon't take any deep, abiding interest in automobiles. All they mean toyou is something to ride in, but to me they're as interesting as a newmagazine. I've spent about four days in the sales-rooms since I've beenhere, and when I get home I'll be the center of breathless attentionuntil I've passed around all the information I've dug up. I could goback without any information about the new shows, or the city campaign, but if I were to come back without a bale of automobile gossip, I'd befired for gross incompetency from the League of Amateur Advisers atGayley's garage. 

You thought I said I didn't own a machine? I did say it and I can proveit. But do you suppose that makes any difference in Homeburg? Here theother fellow's car is his own business. But in Homeburg an automobile isevery one's business. It's like the weekly newspaper, or the newminister, or the latest wedding--it's common property. Since gasolinehas been domesticated we're all enthusiasts, whether we are customers ornot. The man who can't talk automobile is as lonely as the chap whocan't play golf at a country club. About all there is left for him to dois to hunt up Postmaster Flint and talk politics. Flint has to talk allour politics; it's what he's paid for, but it's mighty hard on himbecause he just bought a new machine last spring himself. 

No, you guessed wrong, Jim. Automobiles aren't a curiosity in Homeburg. How many are there in New York? Say eighty thousand. One for every sixtypeople. Homeburg has twenty-five hundred people and one hundredmachines, counting Sim Askinson's old one-lunger and Red Nolan's refinedcorn sheller, which he built out of the bone-yard back of Gayley'sgarage. That's one for every twenty-five people. Figure that out. Itonly gives each auto five members of the family and twenty citizens tohaul around. We're about up to the limit. Of course another one hundredpeople could buy machines, I suppose; but that would only allow twelveand a half passengers, admirers, guests, and advisers for each car. Thatisn't anywhere near enough. Why, it wouldn't be worth while owning amachine! As it is, we are all busy. I've ridden in twenty new machinesthis year and passed my opinion on them. It has taken a good deal of myspare time. I've thought sometimes of buying one myself, but I don'tbelieve it would be right. If I had a car myself, I would have toneglect all the others. It wouldn't do. Besides, I like to be peculiar. 

Is every one in Homeburg a millionaire? Goodness, no! Our brag is thatwe have less people per automobile than any other town, but then that'sthe ordinary brag with an Illinois small town. We're not much ahead ofthe others. Automobiles don't stand for riches out our way. Blamed if Iknow what they do represent. Mechanical ingenuity, I guess. Country townpeople pick up automobiles as easily as poor people do twins. And theyseem to support them about as inexpensively. If you were to take a triparound Homeburg at seven A. M. On a Sunday morning, you would find abouteighty-seven automobile owners out in the back yard over, under, orwrapped around their machines. 

In the city you can only tell a car owner these days by his silk socks;but in the country town the grimy hand is still the badge of the order. The automobile owner does his own work, like his wife, and on Sundaymorning, instead of hustling for the golf links, he inserts himself intohis overalls and spends a couple of hours trying to persuade thecarbureter to use more air and less gasoline. The interest ourautomobile owners take in the internals of their cars is intense. Thatis the only thing which mars the pleasure of the professional guest, such as myself. More than once I've sat in the sun twenty miles fromhome while some host of mine has taken his engine down clear to the bedplate, just because he had the time to do it and wanted to see how thebearings were standing up. 

I've lived in Homeburg all my life, but I haven't yet solved the mysteryof how some of our citizens own machines. It's a bigger mystery thanyours because our automobile owners pay their bills, and the mortgagerecords don't tell us anything. There's Wilcox, the telegraph operator. He makes seventy-five dollars a month. He works nights to earn it, andhe spends his days driving around the country in his runabout. He'sthirty years old, and I think he invested in an auto instead of a wife. 

You can get a good meal in our local restaurant for twenty-five cents, and when some painstaking plutocrat comes in and tries to spend a dollarthere, he has to be removed by kindly hands in a state of fataldistension before the job is finished. A thousand dollars would buystock, fixtures, and good will. But a thousand wouldn't buy therestaurant owner's automobile. He began with two hundred and fiftydollars' worth of rubbish and a monkey wrench four years ago, and haspottered and tinkered and traded and progressed until he now owns a lastyear's model, staggering under labor-saving devices. 

Our oculist, who does business in a tiny corner in a shoe-store andnever overcharged any one in his life, was our pioneer automobile owner. He bought a homemade machine and a mule at the same time, and byjudiciously combining the two he got a good deal of mileage out of both. He would work all morning getting the automobile down-town and allafternoon getting the mule to haul it back. He has had three machinessince then, and the one he owns now is only third-hand. 

For years Mrs. Strawn washed clothes for the town from morning tillnight, two washings a day and all garments returned intact. Her boysused to call at our house for the wash with a wheelbarrow. They come inan automobile now. She bought it. It was a hopeless invalid at the time, but they nursed it back to health, and I hear that next spring they aregoing to trade it in for a new machine. . . . Why do I say machine? Becausethat's what an automobile is out our way. It's a machine, and we treatit as such. Most of our people couldn't take a lobster to pieces to savetheir lives, but you ought to see them go through the shell of an auto. Too many Americans buy portable parlors with sixty-seven coats ofvarnish, and are then shocked and grieved to discover when too late thatsaid parlors have gizzards just like any other automobile and that theyshould have been looked after. 

I said there were one hundred automobiles in Homeburg. I was mistaken. There are ninety-nine automobiles and one car. The Payleys own the car. They bought it in New York, paid six thousand dollars for it, with achauffeur thrown in to drive them home, and they have been under histhumb ever since. He was the only chauffeur who had ever been broughtalive in captivity to Homeburg, and the whole town inspected him withthe utmost care. He was the best stationary chauffeur I ever saw. Heseemed to regard that car as a monument and was shocked at the idea ofmoving it around from place to place. 

It was too high-priced a car to be touched by Sam Gayley, our local autodoc. , and somehow the chauffeur never seemed to be able to keep it inrunning order long enough to get up to the Payley residence and take thefamily out. He ran around the country a good deal, however, tuning it upand trying it out, and as he was a sociable cuss, some of us always wentwith him. In fact, about every one rode in the Payley car that summerexcept the Payleys. Wert Payley used to stop me and ask if I could fixit up to take him along sometime when I went riding with his chauffeur, but I never would risk it. Besides, it would be imposing on the boy'sgenerosity to lug a friend along when you went riding. 

The most of our machines vary from the one thousand, five hundred dollartouring car to the five hundred dollar little fellows; and since theyhave come, life in Homeburg is twice as interesting. They are ourdissipation, our excitement, our amusement, and the focus of our townpride. The Checker Club disbanded last winter because the members got toquarreling over self-starters, and I understand that in the Women'sMissionary Societies and the afternoon clubs the comparative ridingqualities of the various tonneaus about the city have about driven outteething and styles as a subject of debate. For a while during theWilson campaign, it looked as if politics was going to get a foothold inthe town, but some enthusiast organized a flying squadron of automobilesto propagate Democratic gospel, and then it was all off. Everybodyrushed into the squadron, and the trips around the district becamereliability runs, with a lone orator addressing the freeborn citizensupon the tariff at each stop, and said freeborn citizens discussingmagnetos, springs, and tires with great earnestness and vehemence duringthe speech. 

Business always suspends for half a day whenever a new automobile comesto town. There may be a dozen of the same make already, but that doesn'tmake any difference. We are experts, trained to notice the finer shadesof perfection, and until we have seen each new machine put up the clayhill four miles south of town and have ridden in it over the Q. B. & C. Crossing and the other places which show up bad springs, we can't fixour minds on our work. Time was when a new baby could come into Homeburgand hold the attention of the town for a week. Now a baby is lucky ifits birth notice isn't crowded out of the _Democrat_ to make room forthe list of new machines. 

As for those of us who haven't automobiles, life is pleasant and withoutresponsibilities. We ride in every new automobile, and, what is more, wego over it as carefully as a farmer does a new horse. We open its hoodand pry into its internal economy. We crank it to test itscompression--half the Homeburg men who have achieved broken wrists bythe crank route haven't autos at all. We denounce the owner's judgmenton oils and take his machine violently away from him in order to provethat it will pull better uphill with the spark retarded. At night, during the summer, we hurry through supper and then go out on the frontporch to wait for a chance to act as ballast. 

No automobile owner in the dirt roads belt will go out without a fulltonneau if he can help it--makes riding easier--and this means permanentemployment during the evenings for about three hundred friends allsummer long. In fact the demand for ballast is often greater than thesupply. As a result, we have become hideously spoiled. I have passed upas many as six automobiles in an evening on various captious pretexts, waiting all the time for Sim Bone's car, whose tonneau is long andexactly fits my legs. Once or twice Sim has failed to come around afterI have waved the rest of the procession by, and we have had to stay athome. I have spoken to him severely about this, and he is more carefulnow. 

Because of our great interest in automobiles, vicarious or otherwise, there is no class-hatred in Homeburg. If a man were to stop by theroadside and begin to denounce the automobile as an oppressor of thepedestrian, he would in all probability be kidnaped by some acquaintancebefore he was half through and carried forty miles away for company'ssake. About the only Homeburg resident who doesn't ride is old AuntieMorley, who broke her leg in a bobsled sixty years ago and has had aholy horror of speed ever since. 

In fact the only classes we have are the privileged class who merelyride in automobiles and the oppressed class who ride and have to pay forthem, too. Lately the latter class has begun to feel itself abused andhas been grumbling a little, but we overlook it. No appeal to prejudiceand jealousy can move us. Of course, I don't think that an automobileowner should be expected to leave his wife at home in order toaccommodate his neighbors, and there may be some just complaint when anowner is called up late at night and asked to haul friends home from aparty to which he hasn't been invited. But on the whole the automobileowners are very well treated. Suppose we spectators should band togetherand refuse to ride in the things or talk about them! The market wouldbe glutted with second-hand cars in a month. 

We have no trouble with the speed limit in Homeburg either. This may bedue partly to our good sense, but it is mostly due to our peculiarcrossings. Homeburg is paved with rich black dirt, and in order to keepthe populace out of the bosom of the soil in the muddy seasons, thebrick crossings are built high and solid, forming a series ofimpregnable "thank-ye-marms" all over the town. One of our greatdiversions during the tourist season is to watch the reckless strangersfrom some other State dash madly into town at forty miles an hour andhit the crossing at the head of Main Street. There is a crash and ascream as the occupants of the tonneau soar gracefully into the top. There is another crash and more screams at the other side of the street, and before the driver has diagnosed the case, he has hit the ExchangeStreet crossing, which sticks out like the Reef of Norman's Woe. Whenhe has landed on the other side of this crossing, he slows down and goesmeekly out of town at ten miles an hour, while we saunter forth and pickup small objects of value such as wrenches, luncheon baskets, hairpins, hats, and passengers. 

Last summer we picked up an oldish man who had been thrown out of anunusually jambangsome touring car. He had been traveling in the tonneaualone, and even before he met our town he had not been enjoying himself. The driver and his accomplice had not noticed their loss, and when wehad brushed off and restored the old gentleman, he said "Thank God!" andwent firmly over to the depot, where he took the next train for home, leaving no word behind in case his friends should return--which they didthat afternoon and searched mournfully at a snail's pace for over twentymiles on both sides of our town. 

Since the automobile has begun to rage in our midst, the garage is thecenter of our city life. The machine owners stop each day forlubricating oil and news and conversation; the non-owners stroll over toinspect the visiting cars and give advice when necessary; and theloafers have abandoned the implement store, Emerson's restaurant, andthe back of McMuggins' drug store in favor of the garage, because theyfind about seven times as much there to talk about. The city garagecan't compare with ours for adventure and news. I have spent a few hoursin your most prominent car-nurseries and I haven't heard anything butprofanity on the part of the owners and Broadway talk among thechauffeurs. 

In the country it's different. Take a busy day at Gayley's, forinstance. It usually opens about three A. M. , when Gayley crawls out ofbed in response to a cataract of woe over the telephone and goes outnine miles hither or yon to haul in some foundered brother. Gayley has asoft heart and is always going out over the country at night to reasonwith some erring engine; but since last April first, when he traveledsix miles at two A. M. In response to a call and found a toy automobilelying bottom-side up in the road, he has become suspicious andembittered, and has raised his prices. 

At six A. M. Worley Gates, who farms eight miles south, comes in to catchan early train and delivers the first bulletin. The roads to the southare drying fast, but he went down the clay hill sidewise and had to gothrough the bottom on low. At seven, Wimble Horn and Colonel Ackley andSim Bone drop in while waiting for breakfast. Bone thinks he'll drive toMillford, but doesn't think he can get in an hour's business and getback by noon. 

This starts the first debate of the day, Colonel Ackley contending thathe has done the distance easily in an hour-ten, and Sim being franklyincredulous. Experts decide that it can be done with good roads. Colonelsays he can do it in mud and can take the hills on high; says he nevergoes into low for anything. Bill Elwin, one of our gasless experts, reminds him of the time he couldn't get up Foster's Hill on second andwas passed by three automobiles and fourteen road roaches. This is adistinct breach of etiquette on Bill's part, for he was riding withColonel at the time and should have upheld him. The discussion is justgetting good when Ackley's wife calls him home to breakfast over the'phone, and the first tourist of the day comes in. 

He has come from the west and has had heavy weather. He asks about theroads east. Gibb Ogle, our leading pessimist, hastens to inform him thatvery likely the roads are impassable, because the Highway Commissionershave been improving them. Out our way road improvement consists oftearing the roads out with a scraper and heaping them up in the middle. It takes a road almost a year to recover from a good, thorough case ofimprovement. 

The stranger goes on dejectedly, and about nine A. M. Young Andy Linkroars in with his father's car, which he has taken away from the old manand converted into a racer by the simple process of taking off themuffler and increasing the noise to one hundred miles per hour. Andydeclares that there has been no rain to the northwest and that he hasdone sixty miles already this morning, but can't get his carbureter toworking properly, as usual. By this time several owners and a dozencritics have assembled, and the morning debate on gasoline versus motorspirit takes place. It ends a tie and both sides badly winded, whenPelty Amthorne drives in, very mad. He has been over to Paynesville andback. This is only twenty miles, but owing to the juicy and elusivecondition of the roads, his rear wheels have traveled upward of twothousand miles in negotiating the distance and he has worn out two rearcasings. 

Right here I wish to state that Homeburg roads are not always muddy. Weaverage three months of beautiful, smooth, resilient and joltless roadseach year. The remaining nine months, however, I mention with pain. Illinois boosters say our beautiful rich black soil averages ten feet indepth, but I think this understates the case--at least our beautifulblack dirt roads seem to be deeper than that in the spring. What we needin the spring in Illinois are locks and harbor lights, and the man whoinvents an automobile buoyant enough to float on its stomach and paddleits way swiftly to and fro on the heaving bosom of our April roads willbe a public benefactor. 

Pelty is justly indignant, because he had hoped to get another thousandmiles of actual travel out of his tires. We sympathize with him, but inthe middle of his grief Chet Frazier drives up. When he sees his ancientenemy, he climbs out of his car, comes hastily over to where Pelty iserupting, and starts trading autos with him. 

Did you ever hear a couple of seasoned horse traders discussing eachother's wares? Horse traders are considerate and tender of each other'sfeelings compared with two rural automobile owners who are talking swapwith any enthusiasm. 

"Hello, Pelty, " says Chet. "Separator busted again?"

Everybody laughs, and Chet walks all around the machine. "Why, it ain'ta separator at all, " he finally says. "What is it, Pelty?"

"If you'd ever owned an automobile you'd know, " grunts Amthorne, hauling off a tire. "What's become of that tinware exhibit you used toblock up traffic with?"

Chet gets the laugh this time. 

"That tinware exhibit stepped over from Jenniesburg in thirty minutesflat this morning, " says Chet. "Lucky you weren't on the road. I'd havethrown mud on your wind shield. "

"Say!" Pelty shouts. "Your machine couldn't fall ten miles in thirtyminutes. Why don't you get a real automobile? What will you give me toboot for mine?"

They are off, and business in the vicinity suspends. 

"I'll trade with you, Pelty, " says Chet calmly--quite calmly. "Let melook it over. "

He walks carefully around the auto, opens the hood and looks in. "Funnyengine, isn't it? I saw one like that at the World's Fair. "

Pelty has the hood of Chet's machine open too and is right there withthe retort courteous. "Is this an engine or a steam heater?" he asks. "What pressure does she carry?"

"She never heats at all except when I run a long time on low, " Chet sayseagerly. 

"Oh, yes, " says Pelty, "I never have to go into low much--"

"Gosh!" Chet explodes. "When you go up Sanders Hill, they have to closetwo district schools for the noise. "

"Only time you ever heard me I was hauling you up with your brokenjack-shaft, " snorts Pelty. "You ought to get some iron parts for yourcar. Cheese has gone out of style. "

"You still use it for tires, I see, " says Chet. 

"Never mind, " says Pelty wrathfully. "I get mileage out of my machine; Idon't drive around town and then spend two days shoveling out carbon. "

"Peculiar radiator you've got, " says Chet, changing the subject. "Oh, Isee; it's a road sprinkler. What do you get from the city for laying thedust?"

"I can stop that leak in two minutes with a handful of corn meal, " saysPelty, busily surveying Chet's machine. "Do you still strip a gear onthis thing every time you try to back?"

"Why do you carry a horn?" asks Chet. "You're wasteful; I heard yourvalves chattering when I was three blocks away. "

"I didn't hear yours chatter much last Tuesday on Main Street, " snortsPelty. "You cranked that thing long enough to grind it home by hand. "

"Ya-a! Talk, will you?" yells Chet earnestly. "Any man who beginscarrying hot water out to his machine in a teakettle in September knowsa lot about starting cars. "

"Well, get down to business, " says Pelty. "You want to trade, you say. I don't want that mess. It's an old back-number with tin springs, glassgears and about as much compression as a bandbox. Give me five hundreddollars and throw your automobile in. I need something to tie my cow to. She'd haul away anything that was movable. "

"Give you five hundred dollars for that parody on a popcorn wagon?"snorts Chet. "Why, man, the poor old thing has to go into low to pullits shadow! You're delirious, Pelty. I'll tell you what I'll do. Yougive me a thousand dollars for my car, and I'll agree to haul that oldcalliope up to my barn, out of your way, and make a hen roost out of it. Come on now. It's your only chance. "

Shortly after this they are parted by anxious friends, and the show isover. I've known Homeburg men to give up a trip to Chicago because Chetand Pelty began to trade their autos just before train time. 

In New York an auto means comfort and pleasure and advertisement, like afur-lined overcoat with a Persian lamb collar. But in Homeburg it meansa lot more. It keeps us busy and happy and full of conversation anddebate. It pulls our old, retired farmers out of their shells and makesthem yell for improvements. It unbuckles our tight-wads and gives ouringenious young loafers something to do. It promotes town pride, and itkeeps our money circulating so fast that every one has a chance to graspa chunk as it goes by. 

It has made us so independent of railroads that we feel now when buyinga ticket to Chicago as if we were helping the poor old line out. OurCreamery has been collecting milk and shipping butter in an old roadsterwith a wagon bed thorax for a year. Two of our rural route mail carriersuse small machines, except in wet weather, and good-roads societies inour vicinity are the latest fad. We raised one thousand five hundreddollars last spring to bring the Cannon Ball Trail from Chicago toKansas City through our town, and our hotel-keeper contributed onehundred dollars of it. He says we'll be on the gas-line tourist route tothe coast after the trail has been marked and drained and graded upwell. 

But mostly the automobile means freedom to us. We're no longer citizensof Homeburg but of the congressional district. We're neighbors to townswe hadn't heard of ten years ago, and the horizon nowadays for most ofus is located at the end of a ten-gallon tank of gasoline. Why, in theold days, you had to go fifty miles east and double back to get into thenorth part of our county, and more of us had crossed the ocean than hadbeen to Pallsbury in the north tier of townships. Now our commercialclubs meet together alternate months, and about seventeen babies in ourtown have proud grandparents up there. 

That's part of what the automobile means to us, Jim. Can you blame mefor being so interested in a new one? Maybe it will have somecontrivance for scaring cows out of a narrow road. 

X

THE HOMEBURG TELEPHONE EXCHANGE

_What Would Happen if We Tried to Get Along With a City Operator_

All right, Jim! Having now completed the task of telephoning to MurrayHill several thousand and something, I'm ready to join you at luncheon. I'm glad I telephoned. I won't have to spend the afternoon doing it nowand, besides, I feel so triumphant. I got through this time withoutforgetting to get a nickel first. I usually go into one of those woodenovercoats and go through all the agonies of elbowing my way through halfa dozen centrals into some one's ear several miles away, and thendiscover that I haven't anything but a half dollar. Then I have to stopand begin all over again. 

Telephoning is one of the prices you have to pay to live in ametropolis, Jim. I suppose it will always hurt me to pay a nickel fortelephoning. Seems like paying for a lungful of air--and bad air atthat. Coming as I do from the simple bosom of the nation, where talkover the wires is so cheap that you sometimes have to wait half an hourwhile two women are planning a church social over your line, I can'tseem to resign myself to paying the price of a street-car ride everytime I breathe a few sentiments into a telephone. Now the street carsnever fail to dazzle me. They are a wonderful bargain. When we are tootired to walk in Homeburg, we have to pay at least fifty cents for ahorse from the livery stable, unless some automobile is going our way. Nothing is more pleasant to me than to slip a nickel to a street-carconductor and ride ten miles on it. But when we want to use a telephone, do we go through all this ceremony of dropping a nickel into a set ofchimes? Not much. My bill at home at five cents per telephone call wouldbe more than my income. Why, many a time I've called up as many as eightpeople in the west part of town to know whether the red glow in the skywas the sunset or the Rolling Mills at Paynesville burning down! Andalmost every day I telephone McMuggins, the druggist, to collar a smallboy and send up an Eltarvia Cigar. If that call cost me five cents, Iwould be practically smoking ten-cent cigars, and all Homeburg wouldregard me with suspicion. 

I suppose it will be a hundred years before we get over saying "Greatinvention, isn't it?" every time we have finished a satisfactory sessionover the telephone. But I don't think you city people realize how muchof an invention it is. Of course, the telephone is more important inNew York than it is in Homeburg. If you had to go back to theold-fashioned stationary messenger boy to do your business here, a goodshare of the city would have to close out at a sacrifice. You do thingswith your telephones which dazzle us entirely, like talking into parlorcars, calling up steamships, buying a railroad and saying airily "Chargeit, " and tossing a few hectic words over to Pittsburgh or Cincinnati atfive dollars per remark, as casually as I would stop in and askPostmaster Flint why in thunder the Chicago papers were late again--andthat is about as casual as anything I know of. 

I'm willing to admit that your telephones are much more wonderful thanours, not only because of what they do for you, but because of theamount of money they can get out of you without causing revolutions andindignation meetings. Why, they tell me that business firms here thinknothing of paying one hundred dollars a year for a telephone! At homeonce, when we tried to raise the farmer lines from fifty cents to adollar a month, we almost had to fortify the town. I take off my hat toa telephone which can collect one hundred dollars a year from its userwithout using thumbscrews. It must have more ways of working for youthan I have ever dreamed of. 

No, the telephone in Homeburg is a very ordinary thing, and we could getalong without it quite nicely as far as exertion is concerned, it beingonly a mile from end to end of the town. But if we had to do without ourtelephone girls, we'd turn the whole town into a lodge of sorrow andrefuse to be comforted. I know of no grander invention than the countrytown telephone girl. She's not only our servant and master, but she'sour watch-dog, guardian, memorandum book, guide, philosopher and familyfriend. When our telephone can't give us convenience enough, shesupplies the lack. When brains at both ends are scarce, she dumps hersinto the pot; and when the poor overworked instrument falls down on anytask, she takes up the job. She not only gives our telephone a voice, but she gives it feet and hands and something to think with. 

I got into a big telephone exchange once and watched it for over aminute before I was fired out. It was a very impressive sight--rows onrows of switchboards, hundreds of girls, thousands of little flashinglights, millions of clickety-clicks and not enough conversation to run asewing circle up to refreshment time. The company was very proud of it, and I suppose it was good enough for a city--but, pshaw, it wouldn't doHomeburg for a day. If some one were to offer that entire exchange to usfree of charge, we'd struggle along with it for a few hours, and thenwe'd rise up en masse and trade it off for Carrie Mason, our chiefoperator, throwing in whatever we had to, to boot. 

Our exchange is in the back room of the bank building up-stairs. Youcould put the entire equipment in a dray. Our switchboard is about asbig as an old-fashioned china closet and has three hundred drops. Isuppose an up-to-date telephone manager has forgotten what "drops" areand you can't be expected to know. But out our way the telephonecompanies are coöperative, and as every subscriber owns a share, we alltake a deep personal interest in the construction and operation of theplant, discussing the need of a new switchboard and the advantage ofcabling the Main Street lead, in technical terms. 

Well, anyway, a drop is a little brass door which falls down with aclatter whenever the telephone which is hitched to that particular dropwants a connection. And Miss Carrie Mason, our chief operator, sits ona high stool with a receiver strapped over her rick of blond hairjabbing brass plugs with long cords attached into the right holes withunerring accuracy, and a reach which would give her a tremendousadvantage in any boarding-house in the land. Sometimes she has oneassistant, and in rush hours she has two. But on Sunday afternoons andother quiet times she holds down the whole job alone for hours at atime; and when I go up to her citadel and ask her to jam a toll callthrough forty miles of barbed wire and miscellaneous junk to Taledo bysheer wrist and lung power, she entertains me as follows while I wait:

"Yes, indeed, I'll get your call through as soon as I can, but theconnection's--Nmbr--awful--Nmbr--bad to-day--Nmbr--They're not at home, Mrs. Simmons; they went to Paynesville--Nmbr--I'll ringagain--Nmbr--Hello, Doctor Simms, Mrs. McCord told me to tell you tocome right out to the farm; the baby's sick--Nmbr--The train's lateto-day, Mrs. Bane, you've got plenty of time--Nmbr--I can't get them, Mrs. Frazier. I'll call up next door and leave word for them to callyou--Nmbr (To me: "Hot to-day, isn't it? I tell 'em we ought to have anelectric fan up here. ")--Nmbr--("It would keep us bettertempered. ")--Nmbr--Oh, Mrs. Horn, will you tell Mrs. Flint when shecomes home that Mrs. Frazier wants her to call her up?--Nmbr--Now, Jimmy, you haven't waited two seconds. I know you're anxious to talk toPhoeb, but she isn't home; she's at the cooking club--Nmbr--Cambridge, do see if you can't get through to Taledo. I've a party here that's in ahurry--Nmbr. (To me: "That Taledo line's awful. It's grounded somewhereon that farmer's line west of Tacoma. ")--Nmbr--Yes, Mr. Bell, I'll callyou quick as he comes in his office; I can see his door from mywindow--Nmbr--No, Mrs. Bane, the doctor's just gone out to the McCordfarm. If you hurry, you can stop him as he goes past. He left about fiveminutes ago--Nmbr--Gee, Paynesville, you gave me an awful ring in theear then! No, you can't get through, the line's busy. Well, you'll haveto wait. I can't take the line away from them--Nmbr--Oh! (very softly)Hello, Sam. Oh, pretty well. I'm most melted--wait aminute--Nmbr--Hello, Sam (long silence) Oh, get out! My ear's all fullof taffy--wait a minute--Nmbr--Nmbr--No, Mr. Martin, there hasn't beenany one in his office all day. I think he's gone to Chicago--Hello, Sam--wait a minute, Sam--Nmbr--Nmbr--Hello, Sam--Say, I'm all alone andjumping sidewise. Call me up about six (very softly). G'by, Sam--Nmbr. Oh, Mrs. Lucey, is Mrs. Simms at your house? Tell her her husband willbe home late to supper, he's gone out in the country--Hello. Hello. _Hello_, Taledo. Is your party ready? (To me: "All right, here they are. You'll have to talk pretty loud. ") Hello, Taledo. All ready--Nmbr. "

That is a fair sample of Carrie. We couldn't keep house without her. Andthat's why I feel an awful pang of jealousy when I hear that lobster Samtalking to her. Maybe it's just the ordinary joshing which goes on overthe toll lines in the off hours. But maybe it isn't. Wherever Sam is andwhoever he is, he is a danger to Homeburg. Perhaps he is a lineman atPaynesville, and then again he may be a grocer in some crossroads townnear by, with a toll telephone in the back of his store. But if he talksto Carrie long enough and skilfully enough, he will come up to Homeburg, marry her, and bear her away to his lair, far from our bereaved ears. We've lost several telephone girls that way, and when a telephone girlknows all of your habits and customs and those of your friends, and cantell just where to find you or to find whomever you want found, and hasthe business of the town down to the smallest details stowed away in hercapable head, it messes things up dreadfully to have her leave us highand dry and go to housekeeping--which any one can do. 

Telephone girls are born, not made, in towns like Homeburg. We requireso much more of them than city folks do. When my wife wants to know ifhats are being worn at an afternoon reception, she calls up Carrie. Tento one Carrie has caught a scrap of conversation over the line andknows. But if she hasn't, she will call up and find out. When a doctorleaves his office to make a call, he calls up Carrie, and she faithfullypursues him through town and country all day, if necessary. When we arepreparing for a journey, we do not go down to the depot until we havecalled up Carrie and have found out if the train is on time, and if itisn't, we ask her to call us when it is discovered by the telegraphoperator. And when our babies wander away, we no longer run franticallyup and down the street hunting for them. We ask Carrie to advertise fora lost child seven hands high, and wearing a four-hour-old face-wash;and within five minutes she has called up fifteen people in variousparts of the town and has discovered that said child is playing Indianin some back yard a few blocks away. 

Carrie is also our confidante. I hate to think of the number of thingsCarrie knows. Prowling into our lines while we are talking, as she does, in search of connections to take down, she overhears enough gossip toturn Homeburg into a hotbed of anarchy if she were to loose it. But shedoesn't. Carrie keeps all the secrets that a thousand other womencan't. She knows what Mrs. Wimble Horn said to Mrs. Ackley over theline which made Mrs. Ackley so mad that the two haven't spoken for threeyears. She knows just who of our citizens telephone to Paynesville whenHomeburg goes dry, and order books, shoes, eggs, and hard-boiled shirtsfrom the saloons up there to be sent by express in a plain package. Sheknows who calls up Lutie Briggs every night or two from Paynesville, andyoung Billy Madigan would give worlds for the information, reservingonly enough for a musket or some other duelling weapon. She knows howhard it is for one of our supposedly prosperous families to get creditand how long they have to talk to the grocer before he will subside foranother month. 

There's very little that Carrie doesn't know. I shudder to think whatwould happen if Carrie should get miffed and begin to divulge. Once wehad a telephone girl who did this. She was a pert young thing who hadcome to town with her family a short time before. It was a mistake tohire her--telephone girls should be watched and tested for discretionfrom babyhood up--but our directors did it, and because she showed apassion for literature and gum and very little for work, they fired herin three months. She left with reluctance, but she talked withenthusiasm; and Homeburg was an armed camp for a long time. 

Goodness knows we have enough trouble with our telephone even withCarrie to supply discretion for the whole town. Party lines and rubberears are the source of all our woe. You know what a party line is, ofcourse. It's a line on which you can have a party and gab merrily backand forth for forty minutes, while some other subscriber is wildlydancing with impatience. Most of our lines have four subscribers apiece, and it's just as hard to live in friendliness on a party line as it isfor four families to get along good-naturedly in the same house. 

There's Mrs. Sim Askinson, for instance. She's a good woman and her pieshave produced more deep religious satisfaction at the Methodist churchsocials than many a sermon. But St. Peter himself couldn't live on thesame telephone line with her. She's polite and refined in any other way, but when she gets on a telephone line she's a hostile monopolist. Earlyin the morning she grabs it and holds it fiercely against all comers, while talking with her friends about the awful time she had the nightbefore when the cold water faucet in the kitchen began to drip. Mrs. Askinson can talk an hour on this fertile subject, stopping each minuteor two to say, with the most corrosive dignity, to some poor victim whois wiggling his receiver hook: "Please get off this line, whoever youare. Haven't you any manners? I'm talking, and I'll talk till I getthrough. " And then, like as not, when she's through, she'll leave thereceiver down so that no one else will be able to talk--thus holding theline in instant readiness when another fit of conversation comes on. Seven party lines have revolted in succession and have demanded thatMrs. Askinson be taken off and wished on to some one else, and Sim ismighty worried. His wife has lost him so many friends that he doubts ifhe will be able to run for the town board next year. 

We're a nice, peaceable folk in Homeburg, face to face. But like everyone else, we lay aside our manners when we get on the wires and push andelbow each other a good deal. Funny what a difference it makes when youare talking into a formless void to some strange human voice. I've neversaid: "Get out of here, " to any one in my office yet, but when some oneintrudes on my electric conversation, even by mistake, I boil with rageand I yell with the utmost fervor and indignation: "Get off this line!Don't you know any better than to ring in?" And the other person comesright back with: "Well, you big hog, I've waited ten minutes, and I'llring all I want!" And then I say something more, and something is saidto me that eats a little semicircular spot out of the edge of my ear. It's mighty lucky neither of us knows who is talking. Suppose Carrieshould tell. As I say, Carrie holds us in the hollow of her hand. 

But the rubber ear is even worse than the Berkshire manners. A rubberear is one that is always stretching itself over some telephone line tohear a conversation which doesn't concern it. For a long time we weresingularly obtuse about this little point of etiquette in the country. The fact that all the bells on a line rang with every call was aconstant temptation to sit in when we weren't wanted. We listened toother people's conversations when we felt like it. It amused us, and whyshouldn't we? We rented our telephone and we had a right to pick it upand soak in everything that was going through it. 

When the exchange was first put in, fifteen years ago, more than oneHomeburg woman used to wash her dishes with the telephone receiverstrapped tightly to her ear, dropping into the conversation whenever shefelt that she could contribute something of interest. As for the countrylines, it was the regular thing, and nobody minded it at all. That waswhat killed the first line out of Homeburg. It had fourteen subscribersand every one was hitched on the same wire. For a month everything wentnicely. Then old man Miller got mad at two neighbors who were sort ofsizing him up over the wire, and quit speaking to them. And Mrs. Ameswas caught gossiping, and a quarrel ensued in which about half the linetook part, all being on the wire and handy. Young Frank Anderson heardBarney DeWolf making an engagement with his girl and licked Barney. Onething led to another until not a subscriber would speak to another one, and the line just naturally pined away. 

Etiquette has tightened up a lot since then. Still, we have rubber earsto-day, and they cause half the trouble in Homeburg. You see, thetelephone has entirely driven out the back fence as a medium of gossip. It offers so much wider opportunities. Nowadays it does all the businesswhich begins with: "Don't breathe this to a soul, but I just heard--"and half the time some uninvited listener with an ear like a graphophonehorn is drinking in the details, to be published abroad later. Mrs. CalSaunders had our worst case of gummy ear up to a couple of years ago, and broke up two engagements by listening too much. But she doesn't doit any more. Clayt Emerson cured her. 

Something had to be done for the good of the town and Clayt, who livedon the same line with her, conceived the plan of letting Mrs. Saundershear something worth while just to keep her busy and happy. So he calledup Wimble Horn and talked casually until he heard the little click whichmeant that Mrs. Saunders had focused her large receptive ear on theconversation. Then he told Horn that he was going to burn the darn stuffup, trade being bad, anyway. Wimble offered to help him, and for threenights they talked mysteriously about the crime, mentioning moreplotters, while Mrs. Cal hung on the line with her eyes bulging out, andconfided the secret to all the friends she had. 

Finally on Friday night, Policeman Costello, who was in the deal, toldClayt that the expected had happened and that Mrs. Saunders had toldhim about the horrible incendiary plot which was being hatched. Saturdaynight came, and Costello refused to go to Clayt's store unless Mrs. Saunders would come and denounce the villains, who were among our mostrespected citizens. So Mrs. Saunders finally agreed, in fear andtrembling, and, taking a couple of her firmest friends, she ledPoliceman Costello down to Clayt's restaurant at midnight, and, sureenough, there was a light in the back part. Costello burst open thedoor, and when they all rushed down on the scene of the crime, theyfound Clayt and half a dozen of us manfully smoking up a box of stogieswhich a slick traveling man had unloaded on him. Mrs. Saunders insistedthat crime was about to be committed and got so excited that sherepeated Clayt's exact words--in the middle of which a great light cameto her, and she said she was going home. 

"I think you had better, " said Clayt, "and I'll tell you something more. You listen to other people's affairs more than is good for you. "

But she hasn't since. 

Of course you don't have these troubles. But whenever I see New Yorkpeople harboring telephones in their homes which absolutely decline tobe civil until you feed them five cents, I think of our Homeburgblessings and am content. Six dollars a year buys a telephone at home, and about the only families which haven't telephones are a few widowswho live frugally on nothing a year, and old Mr. Stephens, who has onehundred thousand dollars loaned out on mortgages and spends half an hourpicking out the biggest eggs when he buys half a dozen. There isn't afarm within ten miles which isn't connected with the town, and while thedesk 'phone is a novelty with us and we still have to grind away at ahandle to get Central, we can put just as much conversation into thetransmitter and take just as much out of the receiver as if we wereconnected with a million telephones. Our Homeburg 'phones areold-fashioned; and the lines sound as if eleven million bees wereholding indignation meetings on them, but they have made a big familyout of three whole counties, and I guess they will take care of us allright--so long as Carrie holds out and we can keep that Sam fellow wherehe belongs. 

XI

A HOMEBURG SCHOOL ELECTION

_Where Woman is Allowed to Vote and Man Has To_

Well, Jim, you've taken me to see a great many wonderful sights in thismunicipal monstrosity of yours, but I don't believe one of them hasinterested me as much as this parade. I've worn three fat men on my toesfor an hour to get a chance to watch it, but it was worth the agony. Think of it--at home we are doing well to get an attendance of twothousand at a fire. Here in New York are several hundred thousand peoplestopping their mad grabs at limousines and country houses, and blockingup the streets to watch a few women parading in the interest of theballot for psyche knots as well as bald heads. It's wonderful! How didthe women persuade you to do it? I can't help thinking that they lost atremendous chance for the cause. Think how much money the ladies wouldhave made if each one had worn a sandwich board advertising some newbreakfast food or velveteen tobacco! With a crowd like this readingevery word, they could have charged enough to pay the expenses of awhole campaign!

It's the crowd that interested me. As far as the parade went, it wasn'tso much. Half a hundred women in cloaks and staffs setting off on footfor Washington or Honolulu isn't terrifically exciting. I'd a lot rathergo down the line about twenty or thirty miles and watch them come in toroost at night. There would be some inhuman interest in that. But whatdoes all this mob mean? Have you New Yorkers gone crazy over suffrage?What! Just the novelty of the thing? Well, let me tell you then, you aregoners! You may not want suffrage now, but if the women are going tochoke traffic every time they spring a novelty, you're going to have togrant them suffrage just to get the chance to attend to business now andthen. 

Me? Of course I'm a suffragist. I'm a suffragist on twenty counts. No, thanks, I won't argue the question now, because we have to get over tothe hotel for dinner in an hour or two, and there's no use starting athing you will have to leave in the middle. I'll just tell you the lastcount to save time, and let it go at that. I'm a suffragist because Iwant the rest of mankind to have what we've had in Homeburg for the lasttwenty years or so. We've been through the whole thing. Whenever a man'sbeen through anything, he naturally isn't content until he can stand byand watch some other man get his. Understand? I'm for suffrage in agedlittle New York. I want you to have it and have it a plenty. And I wantto watch you while you're having it. It's a grand thing when you've gotused to it. It will do you good, Jim, just like medicine. 

Do women vote in Homeburg? Of course they do. I'd like to see anybodystop them. I don't mean that they vote for President. That is, theywon't until next time. It's only the more important elections that theytake part in. Oh, I know you folks in the big town think that unlessyou're voting for governor or for the ringleaders of your citygovernment, the job isn't worth while. But that's where you differ fromHomeburg. We men vote for President and get a good deal of fun out ofthe campaign. It's a favorite masculine amusement, and the women don'tinterfere with us. But it's not important. I mean it's not important toHomeburg. We stand up all summer and tear our suspender buttons offtrying to persuade each other that Homeburg's future depends on whoreviews the inaugural parade at Washington; but it isn't so, and we knowit. 

The really burning question in Homeburg is the make-up of the nextschool board. That is the election which paralyzes business, splitsfamilies, and sours friendships. And let me just convey to you in a fewbrief words, underscored with red ink, the fact that women vote in theHomeburg school elections. If you want to see real, concentratedpolitics with tabasco sauce trimmings, go to Homeburg or some othersmall town which is fond of its school system and watch the womengetting out the vote. 

Don't waste your time by coming the day before election. Don't evenexpect to see any excitement in the morning. We don't smear our schoolelection troubles all over the almanac. We have the convulsion quicklyand get over it. You could stray into Homeburg on the morning of aschool election and not suspect that anything was going on except, perhaps, a general funeral. Absolute quiet reigns. People are attendingto business with the usual calm. 

You can tell that there is an election on by the little flags stuck outa hundred feet from the engine-house doors, but that's the only way. Inside the judges sit waiting for business about as successfully as acod fisher on the banks of the Mississippi. Now and then some one straysin and casts a vote. By noon half a dozen are in the ballot box. Thenation is safe, the schools are progressing satisfactorily, the ticketis going through without a kick. Even the candidates stop standingaround outside peddling their cards, go home to dinner and forget tocome back. 

Pretty placid, eh? You bet it is. You know all about the calm beforethe storm and the little cloud the size of the man's hand which comes upabout eight bells and does a general chaos business without any advancenotices. Well, that cloud in our school elections is impersonated byMrs. Delia Arbingle, and she usually arrives at the polls about threeP. M. With a new ticket, twenty warlike followers, and several thousandassorted snorts of defiance. 

That's when the storm breaks--and it's a whole lot bigger than a man'shand by that time. Delia is a mighty plentiful woman physically, andwhen she gets her war paint on, she's a regular cloudburst. As I say, about three o'clock or thereabouts, we suddenly wake up to the fact thatwe have a school election in our midst, and that unless we arise as truemen and patriots, it will soon be at our throats. How do we find it out?Our women folks tell us. You never saw such devoted women folks, or suchdetermined ones, either. The minute Delia leaves her house with hermarauding band in her annual attempt to get the scalp of the high schoolprincipal who whipped her oldest son seventeen years ago, the women ofHomeburg _rise_. And we men go and vote. 

Now, we're not enthusiastic about voting. We're not afraid of Delia. We've seen her insurge too often. But we go and vote, anyway. We go byrequest. You've never had your loving wife come in and request you tovote, have you, Jim? Well, you've got something coming. It's a requestwhich you're going to grant. You may not want to, but that has nothingto do with the case. This is about the way it happens in Homeburg: I amsitting in my office. I've got a lot of work on hand, and it's no use tovote, anyway, and, to tell the truth, I had forgotten all about it. Suddenly the telephone bell rings: I answer it. Here's my cross-sectionof the conversation:

"Hello? Oh, hello!. . . No, I haven't voted yet. . . . Pretty busy to-day. . . . You're coming down?. . . No, I don't want to vote. --What's the use? It'sthe same old. . . . Now, my dear, it's just the same old row. She can't getany. . . . But I tell you I'm busy. You go on and. . . . Yes, of course I'm anAmerican citizen, but I don't get a salary for it. I'm trying toearn. . . . Well, five minutes to cast a useless vote is. . . . Oh, all right. Anything to please you. . . . No, I'll not call up Judge Hicks. He's oldenough to vote by himself. . . . Oh, all right. . . . Now, look here, my dear, I can't ask Fleming to do that. His wife is a friend of Mrs. Arbingle's. . . . Yes, I can say that, but it would be a threat. . . . Oh, theschools will run anyway. Now, don't get excited. . . . All right, doggoneit, it'll make a regular fool of me though!. . . Good-by. 

"Gosh. "

I am mopping my forehead while I say that. I'm going to vote and, whatis more, I'm going over to get Judge Hicks, who is a cross oldman-eater, and get him to vote, and then I am going to call up Fleming, who would otherwise vote against us, and tell him that if he doesn'tsupport our ticket, our grocery account will go elsewhere. I hate to dothat like the mischief. It isn't considered ethical in nationalelections. But somehow we can't stop and discuss these fine points at3. 15 P. M. With our loving but excited wives. They don't seem to allowit. 

I get into my coat, pretty cross, and go down-stairs. Homeburg isfrantically awake. Down the street scores of patriots are marching tothe polls. They are not marching in lock-step, but most of them areunder guard just the same. Mrs. Chet Frazier, pale but determined, istowing Chet out of his store. Mrs. Wimble Horn is hurrying down thestreet with an umbrella in one hand and Wimble in the other. From thepost-office comes Postmaster Flint emitting loud wails. It is againstthe law to leave the post-office unoccupied, but he can thresh that outwith his wife at home after he has voted. Attorney Briggs was going toChicago this afternoon, but I notice he is coming back from the depot. Mrs. Briggs is bringing him. If I know anything about rage, AttorneyBriggs is ready to masticate barbed wire. His arms are making a bluehaze as they revolve. But he's coming back to vote. He can go to Chicagoto-morrow, but the nation must be saved before five o'clock. 

I do my errands, losing one friend at Fleming's and considerable dignityat the judge's, because the judge is an old widower and mightyoutspoken. Then I hurry back and go to the polls arm in arm with myloving wife. We have to wait our turn outside the engine house. Fromall corners of town the votes roll in, most of them under convoy. It'sa weird mixture--the men sullen and sheepish, the women inspired andterrible. Even the candidates, most of whom are men, are embarrassed. They are peddling tickets frantically, and whenever they falter and showsigns of running, their wives hiss something into their ears and bracethem up again. 

The two hostile forces are eying each other with horrid looks. Mrs. Arbingle is quiet but deadly. I never saw so much hostility coated overone face as there is on hers. She is in her glory. This time she isgoing to unmask the hosts of corruption, including those who will notcall on her, cave in the school ring, boot out the incompetents, and seejustice done to her son at last. Mrs. Wert Payley, who generally leadsthe other side, has higher ideals, of course, and isn't so red in theface. But she is hostile too. No viperess shall tread on the schoolsystem if she can help it! She keeps her lieutenants hustling, and nowand then she looks over the crowd of captive men on the enemy's side andissues a command. Then some woman talks to her husband, and he gets redand mad and wags his arms. But in the end he goes over and talks to aman on the other side. And then that conversation spreads like a prairiefire, and the men knot up into a cluster, and hard words are used, and alot more friendships go into the back shop for repairs. 

Five o'clock is coming fast. Mrs. Payley looks over her list. Young AdSummers has refused to budge from his shop. Miss Ri Hawkes blushes alittle and then goes away to a telephone. Pretty soon Ad appears. He'spanting, into the bargain. He gets in line, votes, and Ri walks awaywith him. There is a sigh of relief from the Payley cohorts now becauseold man Thompson is coming. He is over ninety and hates like thunder togo out and vote, but he can't help himself. He has lived in a wheeledchair for ten years and has to go wherever his granddaughter wheels him. He passes in, muttering. 

Only five minutes more. The excitement is intense. Hurrah! Some one hasgotten the telegraph operator's goat. He's coming on the run. Thatprobably means he'll go to the next dancing-club party. Judge Hicksappears, four women around him. He is mad, but they are triumphant andthey look scornfully at me, saying "chump" with their eyes. He votes. There is a commotion at the corner because Gibb Ogle has attempted in amild way to be corrupted. He wants to know why he can't sleep in theSouth School basement. The women are indignant, and appoint two husbandsto deal with him. Gibb votes. Bang! The polls are closed. It's all overbut the counting. 

We'd like to go back to work, but the suspense is too great. Not that wehave any suspense, but our wives have; and if we are worthy of the nameof men, we must help them endure it, even if we ourselves are notinterested in the schools. So we hang around and fume over thejungle-fingered judges who take as much time as if they were enumeratingthe fleas of Africa. Finally a cheer comes from the front of the crowd. The women beside us gasp anxiously. Which side cheered? Hurrah! There'sMrs. Payley waving her handkerchief. We win. 

After that, we men can go. The schools have been saved by a vote of 453to 78, but it was no thanks to us. No, indeed! If it weren't for thewomen where would our schools be?

We've had women's suffrage in our midst for almost twenty years, as Isay, and looking back over it I can't see a single dull momentpolitically. From the day when an indulgent State gave them permission, our women have guarded the schools at the ballot box. They've done athorough and painstaking job, and I must say the schools have improved alot. But they have sprung a lot of political ideas which have made theold-timers sit up with startled looks and scratch their headshopelessly. 

That's what you are going to find out, Jim, when woman begins to votefor herself around here and to vote you into the bargain. She isn'tgoing to play the game according to the old rules. She has no use forthem. She has her own way of going about things politically, and whileit is effective, its wear and tear on mankind is terrific. When theHomeburg women first attempted to place a woman on the school board, about fifteen years ago, most of the men objected, and they decided tohold a town caucus and call the women in. There were a great manyreasons why a woman shouldn't leave her home and sit around on a schoolboard, and they felt sure that if they were to talk it over frankly inmeeting they could show them these reasons. And, anyway, the chairmanwould be a man, which would of course take care of the situation. 

So a caucus was called, and the Grand Opera House, which holds sixhundred human beings, and about a hundred boys in the front seats, wasjammed until it bulged. We knew that no woman could out-argue ourseasoned old politicians, and when Calvin Briggs, who has planned allthe inside work in the congressional district for twenty years, got upand showed just why woman ought not to intrude, there was an abashedsilence all over the house, until Emma Madigan, who is a town characterand does just as she pleases, got up. She stood up about fifty-nineseconds after Briggs had got a good start, and she argued with him asfollows:

"That's all right, Mr. Briggs--You can't make me sit down, Mr. Chairman, you nor any of you politicians--You're a fine man to talkabout schools, Mr. Briggs. No, I won't stop. You know a lot aboutchildren, don't you, coming up here with tobacco juice all over yourshirt front; and why don't you pay some taxes before you get up here andtell how to run a town? All right, Chairman, I'm done. "

But so was Briggs. We couldn't help laughing at him. Editor Simpson, whoruns the _Argus_, stepped into the breach and regretted greatly that sodisgraceful an attack had been made upon a well-beloved citizen by awoman. No man would dare make such an attack, he opined. Then Emma gotup again. The chairman called her to order, but he might as well haverapped down the rising tide. 

"I know mighty well no man 'ud dare say what I did, Lafe Simpson, " sheshouted. "'Nd you're the biggest coward of 'em all. If you thought you'dhave to lose the school printing, you'd vote for the devil forpresident of the school board. "

Of course it was perfectly disgraceful, but what could we do? Emma was awoman. We couldn't throw her out. We couldn't even get her to listen toparliamentary rules. And the worst of it was, she was telling the truth. That was something no one presumes to tell in local elections. To do itbreaks the first commandment of politics; but what do the women, bless'em, care for our commandments?

The president of the school board at that time was Sanford Jones. He wasa large party who panned out about ninety-five per cent. Solemnity andthe rest water on the brain. At this point in the proceedings he judgedit best to rise and turn the subject by telling us why woman should stayat home. He got about two hundred words into circulation before Emma gotup. Her scandalized women friends tried to pull her down, and PeltyAmthorne yelled "whoa, " but she was in politics to stay. 

"You look mighty fine standing up there, Mr. Jones, " she shouted, "andtellin' us women to go back home where we belong. But I just want totell this here crowd to-night that if you wasn't tighter than the barkon a tree, your wife wouldn't have to do her own washing. 

"That's why you want her to home. So you can save money. "

After that a gloom fell over the meeting, and as no one else seemed tocare to speak, people began adjourning on all sides of Emma. After everyone else had gone she adjourned. There was no further attempt to hold acaucus that year, and even now when any school faction desires to gettogether and discuss things, it carefully conceals the news from MissMadigan. 

That was just one of the many little surprises woman has handed to usin Homeburg politics. Since they've gotten interested in schoolaffairs, it beats all how much influence they've got. Take SadieAskinson for instance. Her husband wanted to run for member of theschool board, and Sadie didn't want him to, because he was away fromhome enough nights anyway, goodness knows. Sim was stubborn, and saidthe night before election that he was going down and have some ballotsprinted, anyway, and run. But he didn't, because that night Sadie cutevery button off of every garment he had and threw them down into thewell. When the kindergarten business came up about ten years ago, oldColonel Ackley hung out against it on the board. Said he wasn't going tostand for wasting the people's money on such foolishness. But he did, because the Young Ladies' Vigilance Society came and wept upon hisshoulder. It was organized for that purpose, and after the seventh younglady had soaked up Ackley's coat, he said he'd either vote forkindergarten or leave town, and he didn't care much which. 

Mrs. Wert Payley, who really runs our school system and once marred herproud record by defeating a good school superintendent because he didn'tgive her daughter good marks, says the English suffragettes are poorsticks and don't know how to demand the ballot. "If the Homeburg womenwere ready to go after any more ballot than we have now, " says she, "would we fool away time getting arrested? Not much! We'd turn ourattention to the men. Every Homeburg woman would take care of herhusband and argue with him. Maybe all the men in town would find 'Votesfor Women' in place of their dinners on the table one night, and sewedon to their coats the next morning. Maybe they would get corn-meal mushfor thirty days, and maybe, if any he politician presumed to getobnoxious, he would be dealt with on the public street by a committee. I know Homeburg, I think, and before Calvin Briggs would stand for theguying he would receive after half a dozen women had gone down on theirknees to him and grabbed him around the legs so he couldn't get away, he'd go out of politics. Suffragettes? Bah! What do they know about it?I'd just like to know how long our men-folks in Homeburg would hold outif we women were to get sick some fine morning and remain hopelessinvalids until we got the ballot. Why, if Wert Payley presumed to denyme the ballot, I wouldn't think of parading about it. I'd just have thegirl starch his underwear for about two months, and if that didn't fetchhim, I'd start cleaning house and quit in the middle. The men will giveyou anything, if you ask them the right way. "

All of this makes us shiver, because we don't know just how long it willbe before the Homeburg women do make up their minds to have moreballot. But when they do, we'll brace up like men and give it to them ifthe State will let us. We just naturally hate to disappoint ourwomen-folks. 

XII

CHRISTMAS AT HOMEBURG

_And What It Means_

Now don't urge me to stay longer, Jim, because I'm going to anyway. Justto prove it, I'll take another of those gold-corseted cigars of yours, which would elevate me from the masses to the classes in three puffs ifI smoked it back home. I didn't begin telling you how much I haveenjoyed myself because I intended to go and wanted to start the softmusic. I just wanted to begin on the job, that was all. It's going totake me an hour, at least, to tell you and Mrs. Jim what this meal hasmeant for me. 

Oh, I know there have been better meals in history perhaps. I supposenow and then a king gets real hungry and orders up a feed that mighthave a shade on this one--just a shade. That's as far as I'llcompromise, Mrs. Jim. You needn't argue the matter. I'm a regular mulein my opinions. But if you had given me crackers and cheese, and old, decrepit flexible crackers at that, it would have been all the same. I'dhave devoured them with awe and thanksgiving, and I'd have marveled atmy luck. Here it is Christmas Day, and while half a million strangers inNew York have been eating their hearts along with the regular bill offare at boarding-houses and restaurants, I have been grabbed up andtaken into an actual home where they have a Christmas tree!

I always was lucky, Jim. Every time I fell out of a tree in my youth, Ilanded on my head or some other soft spot, but this beats any luck Iever had. Think of it! Me sitting around in the sub-cellar of gloomyesterday afternoon with my family a thousand miles away, and decidingto go to Boston for Christmas just because I'd have to travel ten hoursand that would be some time killed; and then, when I went to myboarding-house for a clean collar, you called me up, just as I wasleaving. There's a special department of Providence working on my case. Got a permanent assignment. And you are a Deputy Angel, Mrs. Jim. Gratitude! You couldn't get my brand of gratitude anywhere. They don'tkeep it in stock. Say the word and I will go back and eat a third pieceof mince pie, and die for you. 

I don't want to seem critical. It's hard for me to criticize anythingright now, anyway, I'm so soaked and soused in contentment. I alwaysstrive to admit all of New York's good points, and I've gotten a jobhere largely to encourage the old town and help it along. But I do thinkthat in one respect New York is in the bush league, so to speak. Evenwith such people as you to help, you can't get much Christmas out of it. When I think of Homeburg to-day, I feel proud and haughty. You can beatus on most everything else, but when it comes to Christmas, we can'tnotice you. You don't compete. 

Christmas in this town is only a feat. It's a race against time in twoheats. If you win the first one, you get your shopping done on the daybefore. If you win the second, you get through Christmas Day, beforeyour patience and good spirits give out. Of course, New Yorkers, likeyourselves, who indulge in families and other old customs, have a mightygood time out of it. Christmas with a family is great anywhere on earth. But that isn't New York's fault. If you didn't have a family, you wouldbe dining out or going to some matinée or sitting around watching theclock. That's where it is your solemn duty to envy Homeburg if younever have done it before. And that's why I would be homesick to-day ifyou had fed me four dinners, Mrs. Jim, and had been a whole covey, orbevy, or flock, or constellation of angels--whichever is correct. 

I don't mean to say that we get any more at Christmas than you do. Weenjoy and endure our presents, same as any one else. And we have just ashard a time buying them. There aren't enough people in Homeburg to makea Christmas jam, but we have our own line of troubles. The question inHomeburg is not how to keep from spending so much money but how to spendwhat we have. The storekeepers don't pamper us. In fact they are severewith us. If we don't buy what they offer the first year, they store itup, and we have to take it the next Christmas. When the Homeburgstorekeepers have had a bad season, it's up to us to go back the nextyear and face the same old line of junk, knowing it will be there untilwe give in and buy it. There are two Christmas gift edition copies ofTrilby still on sale in Homeburg, and Sam Green the druggist has had aten-dollar manicure set on sale for ten years now. He won't get another, either. Says he was stung on the first one, and he's going to get hismoney back before he goes in any deeper. It goes down about fifty centsa year in price, and last year Jim Reebe almost bought it at fourdollars and seventy-five cents for Selma Snood. We have hopes of himthis year--unless he and Selma quarrel or get married, either of whichwill be fatal. 

No, we have our troubles, same as you do, and Homeburg is full, on theday before Christmas, of worried fathers who duck into the stores aboutseven P. M. And try to buy enough stuff to eat up a ten dollar billbefore the doors close. But that's a minor detail. What makes me loveour Christmas is its communism. Christmas isn't a family rite inHomeburg. It's a town festival, a cross between Home-coming Week and ageneral amnesty celebration. 

[Illustration: In Homeburg you come home to the whole town. ]

People come home for Christmas all over the world, but in Homeburg youdon't merely come home to your family, you come home to the whole town. A week before the twenty-fifth the clans begin to gather. Usually thecollege folks come first. Sometimes we have as many as a dozen, and thewhole town is on edge to see them. It's next to a circus parade ininterest because you never can tell what new sort of clothes the boysare going to spring on us. In the grand old days when DeLancey Payleyand Sam Singer used to blow in for Christmas, they walked up from thedepot between double lines of admirers, and their clothes never failedto strike us with awe. I remember the year when Sam came home with oneof those overcoats with a sort of hood effect in the back. I neversaw one before or since. He was also wearing a felt hat as flat as asoup plate that year and a two-quart pipe fitted carefully into hisface, and when old Bill Dorgan, the drayman, saw him, he threw up bothhands and cried, "My gosh, it ain't possible!"

Then the children begin coming back. There is a great difference betweenHomeburg and New York regarding children. In New York a child ispersonal property. But in Homeburg a child belongs to the whole town. Abirth notice is a real news item in Homeburg. I suppose every baby ispersonally inspected by at least two hundred citizens. We criticizetheir care and feeding, suggest spanking when they are a little older, quiver unanimously with horror when they begin to "flip" freight trains, or get scarlet fever, and watch them grow up as eagerly as you NewYorkers watched the Woolworth Building. When they are graduated fromhigh school we are all there with bouquets and presents, and we have anequity in the whole brood. Molly Strawn, the washerwoman's daughter, gotmore flowers than any one last year. And when they leave town to get ajob, if they are boys, or when some rude outsider breaks in with amarriage license and despoils us of them, if they are girls, we all feelthe loss. 

That's why Christmas means so much more to us. At Christmas time thetown children come home. Will Askinson comes home from Chicago. He'sdoing very well up there, and it takes him two hours to get the lengthof Main Street on the first day after he arrives. Every one has to hearabout it. Sadie Gastit comes home from Des Moines with a baby; regularcustom of hers. Sometimes she makes the same baby do for two years, butusually it's a new one. I remember Sadie when she was only knee high toa grasshopper, and her mother spanked her for climbing the Republicanflagpole during the McKinley campaign. The Flint children come down fromChicago to visit their aunt. There were only a boy and girl when theyleft fifteen years ago. Now there are eleven, counting wife, husband, and acquisitions. Last year Ad Bridge brought a new wife home fromDenver to show us. Year before last Miss Annie Simms, who has beenteaching in Minneapolis, brought down a young man to show to her family. She was going to be exclusive about it, but did it work? Not much. Shehad to show him all around. We just happened over there in droves. Everybody loves Annie and we were afraid for a little while that she wasgoing to be an old maid. The young man will bring her down this year Isuppose. They were married last June. 

All the Homeburg children and grandchildren arrive in the last two daysbefore Christmas. They go home to their folks to deposit their baggage, and then they all come down-town to the post-office, to get the mailostensibly but in reality to shake hands all around. The day beforeChristmas is one long reception on Main Street. The old town fairlyhums. 

As a matter of fact, Christmas is a good deal like a Union Depot. Theapproaches are the most important part of it. By the day beforeChristmas every one is feeling so good that things begin to happen. People whom you have never suspected of caring for you come up to youroffice and leave things--cigars, and toys for the children, andChristmas cards. Men with whom you have quarreled during the year shakehands violently all around a circle on the street, and when they come toyou they grab yours, too; and you begin to talk elaborately as ifnothing had happened--a good deal like two women wading through a formalcall; and it makes you feel so good that pretty soon you buy a box ofColorado Durable cigars and you go over to the office of some man forwhom you have cherished an undying hatred, because he didn't vote foryou for the school board. You peek in his door, and if he isn't thereyou go in and leave the cigars with your compliments. 

There's never been a Christmas at home when I haven't been operated onfor a grouch of this sort, and most always it comes the day before. If Ihad my way there wouldn't be any Christmas--only the day before. On theday before you're so tickled over what the other folks are going to getfrom you, and so full of pleased anticipation over what you may get fromthe others, that good humor just bursts out all over you like springwaters from the mountainside. 

On Christmas Eve in Homeburg we all go to the Exercises to hear thechildren perform. They build churches in Homeburg with big doors, sothat they can get big Christmas trees in them, and we grown-ups goearly in order to hear the kids squeal with wonder when they come in andsee those thirty-foot miracles in candles and tinsel, down in front. 

Homeburg children are divided into two classes--those who get all oftheir presents on the church Christmas trees and have to worry throughthe next day without any additional excitement, and those who have tosit through the Christmas Eve exercises with only a sack of candy tosustain them and who land heavily the next day. The discussion as towhich is the better way has raged for a generation, anyway; at least mychum and I discussed it every year when we were boys, he adhering to theChristmas tree plan, and I to the homemade Christmas. And last year, when he came back, we began it all over again, he claiming it was cruelfor me to make my children wait until Christmas Day, and I pitying hispoor youngsters for getting done with Christmas before it began. 

Anyway, Christmas Eve is a grand occasion in the churches, and everyyear I notice with amazement that some youngster whom I remember ashaving been formally introduced to society through her birth notice onlya few weeks ago, seems to me, has gotten large enough to get up on theplatform and speak a piece. They do it at the most unheard-of ages. Ibelieve there are two-year-old orators in the Congregational Sundayschool. I get a good deal of suspense out of some of your baseball gameshere, especially when Chicago plays you, but the most suspense perindividual I've ever noticed has been in these Christmas Eve exerciseswhen some youngster just high enough to step over a crack in the floorgets up to recite a piece, and fourteen parents and relatives leanforward and forget to breathe until he has gotten his forty words out, wrong end to, and has been snatched off the stage by his relievedmother. 

Competition gets into everything, and it has marred our Christmasexercises a little lately. The Methodists are growing fast and are veryambitious. A few years ago they rented the Opera House, put in twoChristmas trees, with a real fireplace between and a Santa Claus whocame out of it, and charged ten cents admission. That embittered usCongregationalists. It smacked of commercialism to us, and we would notbudge an inch--besides, there wasn't another Opera House to rent. So, nowadays, our spirit of good-fellowship on Christmas Eve is sort ofabsent-minded and anxious. We are always counting up our attendance andsizing up our tree, and then sliding over to the Opera House and lookingover the Methodist layout. Sometimes we beat them, but generally theyhave a regular mass meeting and make a barrel of money. Last year theyturned people away and brought Santa Claus on the stage in a realautomobile. We were so jealous that we could hardly cool down in timefor Christmas dinner. 

As a matter of fact, the only unimportant part of our Christmas seasonis Christmas Day itself. It is a sort of hiatus in the great doings. When we go home on Christmas Eve, it is with a great peace. We havebought our presents. We have greeted all the returned prodigals. We havemade up with a few carefully selected enemies. Our children have spokentheir pieces successfully at the Exercises, and have gotten a good starton the job of eating their way through a young mountain range of mixedcandies and nuts. All the hustle and worry is over, and we areunanimously happy. The week following Christmas will be one dizzy roundof parties and teas for the visitors, and Homeburg will be a delightfulplace full of the friends of boyhood, with an average of one reunionevery fifteen minutes in and out of business hours. But on Christmas Daynothing will happen except the dinner. We'll get our presents in themorning, and then at noon the great crisis will come. We'll eitherconquer the dinner, or it will conquer us. 

You know how it is, Jim, because that's the kind of dinner you hadto-day. It was an Athletic Feat--not the ordinary kind of city dinnerwhere you save up carefully during seven courses, and finish strong onthe water crackers and cheese, but a real Christmas gorge. Every time Isit down to a Christmas dinner in Homeburg, I feel more strongly thanever that each guest should have his capacity stenciled on him. They aremore careful of box cars in this country than they are of humans. Younever see a box car that doesn't have "Capacity, 100, 000 lbs. " stenciledon its sides. And they don't overload that car. There have been timeswhen, if I could have had "Capacity, two turkey thighs, one wish-bone, trimmings, and two pieces of pie" stenciled on me, I would have gottenalong better. I think they ought to try to make these Olympic games moreuseful to our nation by instituting a Christmas dinner marathon. If wehave to eat for two hours and a quarter, top speed, once or twice ayear, we ought to train up to the task as a nation. 

I always feel a little bit nervous about Christmas dinner before itcomes, but I never shirk. As a matter of fact, it isn't reallydangerous. As far as I know, no one has ever actually exploded inHomeburg on Christmas Day, and we all seem to get away with the job inpretty fair shape. But it spoils the day for anything else. The town isfull, in the afternoon, of partially paralyzed men lying around on sofasin a comatose condition, like anacondas sleeping off their bi-monthlylunch. Homeburg is absolutely dead for the rest of the day. If a firebroke out on Christmas afternoon, I don't believe even Chief Dobbs wouldhave the energy to get up and put on his helmet. It's hard on the exiledmen who just run down for Christmas Day from the cities. They don't getin on anything but the eating. Sam Frazier struck last year. Said hewasn't going to pay ten dollars fare and incidentals any more, to comedown from Chicago on Christmas Day for an all-afternoon view of hisbrother's feet as said brother lay piled up on the sofa. He was going tocome down after this on the Fourth of July. 

It doesn't affect the women so badly because they don't eat so much. They haven't time. It takes two women to steer one child safely througha Christmas dinner, anyway, and about three to get the ruins clearedaway in time to get up a light lunch in the evening for the revivinghosts. If there is any one time when I would care less to be a womanthan at any other time, it is on Christmas afternoon, when her men-folkshave gone to sleep and have left her with a few cross children and acarload of Christmas dinner fragments for company. 

That's where you city folks with your servant problem have the best ofus, and I'll not dispute it, Mrs. Jim. On the other hand, the nicestpart of our Homeburg Christmas is the fact that, when we fold our tiredhands over our bulging vests after dinner and lie down to rest, we knowthat there is no starving family in Homeburg which has had to celebrateChristmas by taking on an extra drink of water and indulging in a long, succulent sniff at a restaurant door. 

We have poor people in Homeburg, but we haven't any poverty problem atChristmas. It's a strictly local issue, and it is handled by theneighbors. Having lived a long time in the city, Jim, you may not knowwhat a neighbor is. It's a person who lives close to you and takes apersonal interest in your affairs. A good neighbor is a woman whoseheart is so large that she has had to annex a lot of outlying territoryaround the family real estate in order to fill it. No Homeburg womanwould think of constructing an extraordinarily fine pie without sendinga cut over to her nearest neighbor. 

About Christmas time we are especially busy neighboring in Homeburg, andany family which lives near us and isn't going very strong on theChristmas game, because of sickness or trouble, is our meat. It would bean insult to go across the town and help a family in some otherneighbor's territory, and that was what got Editor Simpson of the_Argus_ into trouble a couple of years ago. 

Simpson is a young man, a comparative newcomer from the city, and a veryearnest and enterprising party. He runs the _Argus_ on the high gearand is never so happy as when he is promoting a public movement in realcity style. It occurred to Simpson three years ago that Homeburg oughtnot to be behind Chicago in anything, especially at Christmas time, andso he started a "Good-fellow" movement. They were running it strong inChicago that year. Any man who wished to be a "Good Fellow" sent hisname to the "Good-fellow Editor" and offered to provide a Christmas forone or more poor children. It was a grand idea, stuffed full ofsentiment, and we Homeburg men just naturally ate it up. When the daybefore Christmas came, seventy-five "Good Fellows" were on Simpson'slist, and they had offered to take care of one hundred and twenty-fivechildren, to give each a real Christmas. Simp's office was full ofgroceries and toys, applicants were clamoring for children, all wasexcitement and enthusiasm--and then a horrible state of affairs wasdisclosed. Simpson hadn't provided any children. There was a bleak anddistressing lack of material for us to work upon. In all Homeburg thereweren't ten families who were going without Christmas turkey, or itsequivalent, and in each one of these cases some neighbor had sternlyordered Simp to keep his hands off and mind his own affairs. There wewere--seventy-five Good Fellows with boatloads of cheer and no way todispose of it. The only person we could find in all the town to descendon was Pat Ryan. We smothered him in groceries, and he ate himself intobiliousness that night and had to have a doctor for three days, whichhelped some, but not much. On the whole, it was a dismal failure. 

What! Nine o'clock? Excuse me, Jim. I seem to have taken root here. No;I am going this time. Back to my room with Christmas all gotten throughwith, thank goodness and you folks. You understand. You've made it asnice for me as any two magicians could have done, and I thank you fromthe bottom of my heart. But it's my last Christmas in New York, I hope. Next month the wife and children come on, and by next Christmas, if Ihave any luck at all, we'll join the happy army that swoops down onHomeburg for the holidays. My, but it will be funny to look at the oldtown from the outside in! Me--a visitor in Homeburg!

Do you know what prosperity is to a whole mob of city people, Jim? It'sthe ability to pack up their families and go off to some Homeburg orother for Christmas. And do you know what makes city people successful, in Homeburg opinion? It's coming back every year. And if we made amillion apiece, and didn't preserve enough of the old home-town love tocome back, we wouldn't be successful in their eyes, not by a long way. Well, good-by, philanthropists. And, thank you, I can't come again nextyear. I'm saving up to go home. That's what makes this cigar taste sogood, Jim. Last one I'll smoke until carfare is in the bank. 

THE END

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