The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1904-02-12
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Ps-@j 4, the editor in chief of the
lg&zSsJ Carlow County Herald took
his hand out of his hair, wiped his pen
on his last notice from the White Caps,
put on his coat, swept out the close
little entry and left the sanctum for
the bright June afternoon.
He chose the way to the west, stroll
ing thoughtfully out of town by the
white, hot, deserted Main street and
thence onward by the country road into
which its proud half mile of old brick
store buildings. tumbledown frame
shops and thinly painted cottages de
generated The sun was in his race
where the road ran between the sum-
mer fields, lying waveless, low, gra-
cious in promise; but, coming to a
wood of hickory and beech and wal
nut that stood beyond, he might turn
his doWn-bent hat brim up and hold
his head erect. Here the shade fell
deep and cool on the green tangle Of
rag and iron weed and long grass in
the corners of the snake fence, al
close beside. There was no movement
Of the crisp young leaves overhead.
High in the boughs there was q quick
firt of crimson where two robins hop
ped noiselessly. The late afternoon,
when the air is quite still, had come,
yet there rested somewhere on the
quiet day a faint, pleasant, woody
SMELL 1t came to the editor Of the
Herald as he climbed to the top rail
Of the fence for seat, and he drew
a long breath to get the elusive odor
more luxuriously, and then it was gone
altogether.
"a habit of delicacies," he said aloud,
addressing the wide silence complain
ingly. Zone taste and they quit" he
finished, gazing solemnly upon the
shining little town down the road.
It was a place of which it's inhabit-
ants sometimes remarked easily that
their city had population of from
5000 to 5000 souls, but it should be
easy to forgive them for such state
ments. Civic pride is virtue. The
town lay in the heart Of that fertile
stretch of fiat lands in Indiana where
eastern travellers, glancing from car
windows, shudder and return their eyes
to interior upholstery, preferring even
the swaying caparisons of Pullman to
the monotony without. The landscape
runs on interminably level lines-bleak
in winter, desolate plain of mud and
snow; hot and dusty in summer, miles
on miles of fiat lonesomeness, with not
one cool hill slope away from the sun.
The persistent tourist who seeks for
signs of man in this sad expanse per-
ceives a reckless amount Of rail fence,
at intervals large barn, and here and
there man himself, injurious, patient.
slow, looking up from the fields apa-
thetically as the limited flies by. Now
and then the train passes a village
built scatteringly about a courthouse,
with q mill or two humming near the
tracks. This is county seat, and the
inhabitants and the local papers refer
to it confidently as "our city"
Such a county seat was Plattville,
capital of Carlow county. The social
and business energy of the town con-
centrated on the square, and here in
summer time the gentlemen were wont
to lounge from store to store in their
shirt sleeves, and in the center Of
the square stood the old red brick
courthouse, loosely fenced in a shady
grove of maple and "slipp'ry
ellum"-called the courthouse yard"
When the sun grew too hot for the dry
goods box whittlers in front Of the
stores around the square and the occu-
pants of the chairs in front of the Pal
ace hotel on the corner they would go
across and drape themselves over the
fence and carve their initials on the
top board. From the position of the
sun the editor of the Herald judged
that these operations were now in
progress, and he was not deeply elated
by the knowledge that whatever desul-
tory conversation might pass from man
to man on the fence would probably be
inspired by his own convictions ex-
pressed editorially in the Herald.
He drew a faded tobacco bag and
brier pipe from his pocket and. after
filling and lighting the pipe, twirled the
pouch mechanically about his finger,
then, suddenly regarding it, patted it
caressingly. 1t had been giddy little
bag long ago, gay with embroidery in
the colors of the editors university,
and, although now it was frayed to the
verge of tatters, it still bore an air Of
pristine jauntiness, an air Of which its
owner in nowise partook. He looked
from it toward the village in the clear
distance and sighed softly as he put
the pouch back in his pocket and. rest
ing his arm on his knee and his chin on
his hand. sat blowing clouds Of smoke
out of the shade into the sunshine. alb
sently watching the ghostly shadow on
the white dust of the road.
A little garter snake crtpt under the
fence beneath him and disappeared in
the underbrush; a rabbit. progressing
on it's travels by series of brilliant
dashes and terror smitten halts, came
within few yards of him, sat up with
quivering nose and eyes alight with
fearful imaginings and vanished, a flash
of fluffy brown and white. Shadows
grew longer; q cricket chirped and heard
answers; there was woodland stir OF
breezes, and the pair of robins left the
branches overhead in eager fight. VS.