Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1913-07-25


70.
all's said and done, to be Geek" and
call on all those girls who fiutter sum-
mer evenings in and out Of the Van
| Hart gate Is a much greater thing.
Which is reasonable and proper and
according to the light of the Best Peo-
i pie in many places east and west 9TH
er than Rome, Iowa.
i "Oh, Harlan's all right" repeated
i Arne, "and so are these other people
along High street. So Is that copper
Indian over on the square-he's mark
| ing the spot where something once
happened. In Earlville they're laugh
ing at our row over Sin Creek. Every
/, time a freshet comes, what happens?
Some Of our prominent citizens wake
up in the morning and find their
lawns strewn with drowned socks and
busted stovepipes and brass collar but
tons that Sin Creek has swept down
on us from the garbage heaps Of Earl
Vile. Then they roar and talk creek
diversion, but nothing was ever done
until they made 1t a county steal with
Old Thad Tanner getting the rake-off.
Then, being regular, the best families
agreed to It," 4
| Sinsinawa had been scandal i'm
memorially, everybody knew. But
then everybody loved Sinsinawa, and
Rome without the wanton singing
down a dozen channels from the bluff
would not have been Rome. One could
put up with a vulgar collar button
washed down now and then from the
alleys of Earlville.
Wiley Curran sighed as he watched
the copper Indian across the square,
Chief Winnesaqua, who ruled the land
when squirrels gamboled over the site
of Rome. They were still gamboling
| over the old town, while Earlville had
built it's Hotel Metropole with English
steeplechase scenes around the dining
room wainscot. Rome had had Miss
Amelia Parsons of the Parsons House,
and her one o'clock Sunday dinner,
with chicken. since 1855. Earlville
had it's Elk's club done with a brown
stone front. Rome had its Shakes
peare club which met Thursdays at the
| ladies' homes. Earlville had its syn
dicate theater in cream brick; Rome
had its opera-house sheathed in tin
imitation Of sandstone-and peeling
| off. Earlville-but why rehearse?
There Is the Carnegie library, the
Young Mems Christian association,
the Federal building, the paid fire de-
partment, the interurban, the home OF
Congressman Hall, which, like all the
homes Of great men in the west. was
spiked with the militant decoration of
a German cake-the east addition, and
the factory district
Rome had none of these. In lieu Of
town plats it had an imperial isola-
ton. When the Earlville boosters, In
train, went up the valley, to serenade
other communities and parade in silk
hats and white flannel trousers. Rome
was usually entertaining district dele
gates to the Baptist Young Peoples
association; and when a girl SHOW"
struck Earlville direct from two hun
dred nights in Chicago, Rome's tin
opera house was invariably given over
to Flint, the Hypnotist, the Swiss Bell
Ringers, or the Chautauqua Quartette.
Mr.. Curran accepted tickets to these
on advertising, and sat gloomily all
through. After all. Mr.. Curran was
loyal citizen. Even though he did
print the story Of the drummer who
related that Miss Amelia Parsons OF
the Parsons House insisted on his
| sleeping with brown papers under his
ears, lest the pillows become soiled too
soon after the Saturday change.
OF course he lost advertising. But
Mr.. Curran had an unhappy mania for
printing things that lost advertising
Even now, Miss Vance. looking with
patient eyes at the three-Harlan,
| fair-skinned, resolute, serious, his
large-boned frame carrying, at twen-
ty-one, a mans dignity; her brother
Arne, soil-burned, Indian-cheeked,
nervous, lean, a Lincolnian awkward
ness about his clothes; and then Wiley
with his young-old eyes, the close
| brown beard lending him, in Rome, an
inescapable foreign air-felt Mr.. Cur
rams perennial failure.
At eighteen, when she taught her
| first school, she supposed that Wiley
would ask her to marry him, but he
had gone off on footless wanderings.
Twelve years later he came back, a
trifle stouter, a bit sad, still mischie-
vous, the many sided friend, but not
| the lover. She had gone on to a sue
cessful and widening career; she had
developed a personality, made a place;
| but Wiley-well, Wiley had become
"Curran of the News" Even now
Harlan Van Hart, many years the
younger, was fitting himself for his
| fathers honored footsteps; Arne was
| enthusiastically putting in his great
schemes for soil-sweetening, lecturing
to farmers Institutes, and dabbling in
county politics; but Wiley had marked
time.
She was too sane, too finely schooled
to linger over sentimental regrets be-
cause Of Wiley or herself. Only, as
| wife, and wife of a man of affairs,
she saw one path to the larger life she
longed for. She had the instructive
political predictions Of her family;
the man she should marry must bulk
up with the county men at least Arne,
back from his eager drinking of eco
nomic revolt at the most radical COL
/ lege of the west, was already listened
to- but Wiley's paper-well, 1t was only
the News barking away as 1t had done
since abolition days! The county was
used to that.
| Yet Janet had a peculiar sense OF
his closeness to all that prosy life OF
the countryside. Never losing grieV-
| o,oo Of tho farmers for which the