Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1910-05-13

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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 respondent 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
i bring about
But these were only the gentle heav-
ings and crackings of the ground pre-
| MONETARY of the real earthquake. That
! came on day of days when, as a re-
| ward of merit for having faultless!y
reclted 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 premonitory trem-
| blings, the true earthquake found
| Thomas Jefferson totally unprepared.
| He had been to town often enough 10
| have a clear memory picture OF South
Photographic prehistoric South Tired
| egar. There was a single street, hub
| deep in mud in the rains, beginning
| vaguely in the open square surround
| ing the venerable courthouse of pale
| brick and stucco- pillared porticoes.
| There were the shops-only Thorn IS
! Jefferson and all his kind called them
| "stores"-one- storied 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 it's pretentious name. And last
| ly, there was the Calhoun House,
| dreariest and most inhospitable inn OF
it's 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 it,
Thomas Jefferson had seen it all,
| time and again; and this he rernem-
| bered, that each time the dead, wealth
| worn, miry or dusty dizziness 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 a
| 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 it's entire
! ty. For the genius of modern progress
| is cOntemptuous Of old landmarks and
| impatient of delays. And swift as it's
| race is elsewhere, it is only in that
part of the South which has become
industrial" that it came as a thunder
| clap, with all the intermediate and ac-
| tolerated steps taken at a 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 Thorn
as Jefferson. The muddy street had
vanished to give place to a smooth
black roadway, as springy under foot
as a 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 it 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 Busting throngs were in
possession of the sidewalks; of the
| awe-inspiring restaurant, where they
| gave you lemonade in a 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.
Go De continued)