Lincoln County leader. [volume] (Toledo, Lincoln County, Or.) 1893-1987, 1910-09-16
CHAPTER Ill.

1t has been said that nothing comes
suddenly; that the unexpected is mere
ly the overlooked. For weeks Thom-
as Jefferson had been scenting the un-
wonted in the air of sleepy Paradise.
Once he had stumbled on the engi-
neers at work in the dark woods"
across the creek, spying out a line for
the new railroad. Another day he had
come home late from a fishing excur-
sion to the upper pools to find his faith
er shut in the sitting room with three
strangers resplendent in town clothes,
and the. talk was of iron and COAL of
New South" whatever that might be,
and of wonderful changes portending,
which his father was exhorted to help
| bring about.
But these were only the gentle heav-
ings and crackings of the ground pre-
monitary of the real earthquake That
| came on a day of days when, as a re-
ward of merit for having faultlessly
recited the eighty-third Psalm from
| memory, he was permitted to go -
town with his father. Behold him. then,
dangling his feet-uncomfortable be-
| cause they were stockinged and shod =
from the high buggy seat while the
| LATEST of horses ambled between the
shafts up the white pike and around
| and over the hunched shoulder of
Mount Lebanon. This in the cool Of
the morning of the day of revelations
In spite of the premontory trem-
| blings, the true earthquake found
Thomas Jefferson totally unprepared.
He had been to town often enough to
| have clear memory picture of South
| Tredegar-the prehistoric South Tired
egar. There was single street, hub
deep in mud in the rains, beginning
vaguely in the open square surround
ing the venerable court house of pale
brick and stucco- -pillared porticoes
There were the shops-only Thorn IS
| Jefferson and all his kind called them
"stores"-one-storie these, the wood
en- ones with lying false fronts to hide
the mean little gables; the brick ones
honester in face. but sadly Clipped and
crumbling and dingy with age and the
| weather.
Also, on the banks of the river, there
was the antiquated iron furnace which,
long before the war, had given the
| town its pretentious name. And last
| ly, there was the Calhoun House,
dreariest and most inhospitable inn Of
its kind; and across the muddy street
from it the great echoing train shed,
ridiculously out of proportion to every
other building in the town, the tavern
not excepted, and to the. ramshackle,
| once-a-day train that wheezed and
clanked into and out of 1t.
Thomas Jefferson had seen 1t all.
irnn md ia. III. L.
| bered, that each time the dead, wealth.
er-worn, miry or dusty dullness of it
had crept into his soul, sending him
back to the freshness of the Paradise
fields and forests at eventide with
grateful gladness in his heart.
But now all this was to be forgot
ten, or to be remembered only as q
| dream. On the day of revelations the
earlier picture was effaced, BACKED
out, obliterated; and it came to the
boy with a pang that he should never
be able to recall it again in its entire
ty. For the genius of modern progress
is contemptuous of old landmarks and
impatient of delays. And swift as its
race is elsewhere, it is only in that
part of the South which has become
industrial" that it came as thunder
clap, with all the intermediate and ac-
celerated steps taken at bound. Men
spoke of it as 'the BOOM" 1t was not
that. 1t was merely that the spirit
of modernity had discovered a hither-
to overlooked corner of the field, and
made haste to occupy it.
So in South Tredegar, besprent now
before the wondering eyes of a Thom-
as Jefferson. The muddy street had
vanished to give place to a smooth
black roadway, as springy under foot
as forest path, and as clean as the
pike after a sweeping summer storm.
The shops, with their false fronts and
shabby lean-to awnings, were gone.
or going, and in their room majestic
vastnesses in brick and cut stone were
rising, by their own might, as 1t would
seem, out of disorderly mountains of
building material.
Street-cars, propelled as yet by the
patient mule, tinkled their bells inces.
sanity. Smart vehicles of many kinds
strange to Paradise eyes ratified reck-
lessly in and out among the street OBJ
structions. Bustling throngs were in
possession of the Sidewalks; of the
we-inspiring restaurant, where they
gave you lemonade in glass bowl and
some people washed their fingers In
It, Of the rotunda of the Marlboro, the
mammoth hotel which had grown up
on the site OF the old Calhoun House
distressing crowds and multitudes Of
people everywhere.
ITO De continued.)