The Washington herald. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1906-1939, 1913-08-03
. 1914 THE BOBBs-MERRILL COMPANY

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enough. The SVances and the News
mon sentiment; from this same old
desk Jake Vance in wartime days had
lifted the body of the elder Curran.
helpless with coppertead bullet, and
defied' the mob; and in the years-s0f
the granger movements the News had
supported Vance in repeated hopeless
battles for Congress. Arne had grown
up in this demagogic ferment of vast
ideas; he had come back from his
cow college" quick with a sense of
revolt, an impotence to hurry, his con-
servative county of the Reserve into
the young mems movement" OF the
party.
Harvard" he growled. and then,
conscious of his intolerance, added:
"Oh, well-that's all right. Harlan'll
drop all that Bostonese accent when
he gets back to practice here-s year or
two. And he'll be with US on the band
wagon when we get this county organ
lied to dump the old gang. He'll for
get he's Judge Van Harris son, and
nephew of Senator Fsirchild and a.
a Geekp =.
Again they smiled at Arne's heat.
He and Harlan had played on the same
football team in high school, and the
lean farm boy had been the sensation
of, the State Athletic Association. But
though one may rip up the invading
lines and score the championship
touchdowns and be borne from the
field, smothering in ribbons and have
to face, tongue-tied, the clapping of all
the pretty hands in school at the an
nual association banquet, yet when alls
said and done, to be a Geek" and call
on all those girls who futter summer
evenings in and out of the Van Hart
gate is q much greater thing. Which
is reasonable and proper and accord
ing to the light of the Best People In
many places East and West other than
Rome, Iowa.
"Oh, Harlan's all right" repeated
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 q 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 buttons
that Sin Creek has swept down on US
from the g; rbage heaps of Earlville.
Then they roar and talk creek diver
sion. but nothing was ever done until
they made it a county steal with Old
Thad Tanner getting the rake-off.
Then, being regular, the best families
agreed to it." -
Sinsinawa had been scandal i'm
memorially, everybody knew. But then
everybody loved Sinsinawa, and Rome
without the wanton singing down
dozen channels from the bluff would
not have been Rome. One could put
up with a vuglar 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 gambling
over the old town, while Earlville had
built its Hotel Metropole with English
steeplechase scenes around the dining
room wainscot. Rome had had Miss
Amelia Parsons of the Parsons House,
and her I o'clock Sunday dinner, with
chicken. since 1886. Earlville had its
Elks' Club done with a brownstone
front. Rome had its Shakespeare Club
which met Thursdays at the ladies'
homes. Earlville had its syndicate the
alter in cream brick; Rome had its
opera-house sheathed in tin imitation
of sandstone-and peeling off. Earl.
ville-but why rehearsel There is .
Carnegie Library, the Young Mems
Christian Association, the. Federal
Building, the paid fire department, 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 Ger
man cake-the east addition, and the
factory district. ..
Rome had none of these. In lieu of
town plats it had imperial isolation.
When Earlville boosters, in train, went
up the valley, to serenade other COM
munities and parade in silk hats and
white flannel trousers, Rome was usu-
ally entertaining district delegates to
the Baptist Young Peoples Associa-
ton; and when a girl show" struck
Earlville direc. from 200 nights in Chi
cago. Rome's tin opera-house was in
variably given over to Flint, the hyp-
notist, the Swiss Bell Ringers, or the
Chautauqua Quartet.
MIR. 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 tat Miss Amelia Parsons of
the Parson 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 faculty
for printing things that lost advertis-
ing. Even now, Miss Vance, looking
with patient eyes at the three-Harlan,
resolute serious, his large
boned frame Carrying. at twenty-one, q
mans dignity; her brother Arne, SOIL
burned, Indfan-cheeked, nervous, lean,
a Lincolnian awkwardness about his
clothes; and then Wiley with his
eyes, the close brown beard
lending him, in Rome, an inescapable
foreign air-felt Mr.. Curran's peren-
NAL 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,
tride stouter, a bit sad, still mischiey-
GUS, the many-sided friend, but not the
lover. She had gone TO successful