The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-08-19
CHAPTER L.
DOWN IN EGYPT.

DOWN IN EGYPT.
The place through which the sheriff and
the townspeople walked was a town, be-
cause in Illinois. by virtue of the statute
made and provided, a village is larger than
a town. and there is no municipality that
is smaller. 1t was the county seat and
had two streets in fact. and a number that
nobody ever counted, in law. The two
streets which were thoroughfares. fenced
on each side, lined with houses, cut into
deep ruts in the spring. impassably rough
in the winter and alphabetically dusty in
the summer were the State road and the
road to the depot.
The houses were one story high, and
each had door in the middle of the front,
with a window on either side-except the
house Of the doctor. which palatial resi-
dence had two windows on each side of the
door and three rooms in the front of the
house. Each house stood only FIVE feet
back OF the front fence, made of horizontal
boards or else pickets split out of butts of
trees. Just outside the front fence was
the board sidewalk. narrow and often COM
pletely covered with the debris of munich
pal life. Between the sidewalk and the
wagon tracks IN the street each house had
a pile of chips In various stages of decom-
position. in layers representing annual ac-
cretions due 10 the absence of woodsaws
and the universal custom of cutting the
pole-wOod into stove lengths with axes.
The wood was brought from the bottoms
in lengths OF twenty feet, and piled almost
as high as the house in the autumn. until
the passer-by seemed to be travelling be-
tween breastworks on either side with
70
division fences between lots. Some years
after Noel Shacklett was born a fastidious
man. who moved to town and had ideas
about village Improvement. suggested that
an ordinance be passed compelling people
to remove their woodpiles from the streets:
but this idea resulted only in the business
OF the fastidious man dropping off until he
found ii expedient to move to another town.
There was the public square. which was
the periphery of the figure inclosing the
courthouse yard. This latter contained the
seat of the county government and the
jail, around which the most interest in
civil government revolved. The public
square was in four divisions. two made up
of the facades of stores. and two com
posed of residences which differed from all
the others in that there We're no woodpiles
one-story buildings. except the two prfn-
cipal ones. which had the magniicence of
upstairs rooms let To lawyers-and there
were almost as many lawyers as store
keepers in the town The streets around
the public square were as muddy In the
spring and as dusty in the summer as was
the main street. which carried the most of
the residences like panniers The mud
mortar 10 make good daubing for the
ehinks in log houses and 10 make the
passage OF vehicles impossible when the
frost went out OF the ground The begin
ming OF spring was always counted there
from the frost going out of the ground
for the isotherms make "A long curve to
the north from east Tennessee up through
southern Illinois and then back again 10
their own proper latitude in Arkansas. So
the climate was Of the Southland. and the
people were coordinate with the climate
Many OF them had come from the South.
the rest had immigrated from Perry cOun-
ty Ohio; and then there was the small
excreseence OF Ohio folks-for the people
from Perry county made a distinct arts
tocracy above those from Ohio, in the ma
tive colloquialism: the people from Ohio
were a few families who had followed a
blind fate from the Miami valley and were
iconocIasts In their new home 10 the ex-