Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1915-07-27
CHAPTER TX.
The Goths and vandals.

haska was a minor trading post on
the northwestern frontier, and an out
fitting station for the hunters and
trappers Of the upper Mississippi and
Minnesota lake region.
Later, it became the market town
of a wheat-growing district, and a
foundation Of modest prosperity was
laid by well-to-do farmers gravitating
to that county seat to give their chill
dren the benefit Of a graded school.
Later still came the passing Of the
wheat, a re-peopling Of the farms by
a fresh influx Of home-seekers from
the Old World, and the birth, in Wa
haska and elsewhere, Of the industrial
era.
Jasper Grierson was a product Of
the wheat-growing period. The son
of one Of the earliest Of the New York
state homesteaders in the wheat belt,
he came of age in the year Of the civil
war draft, and was unpatriotic enough
some said. to dodge conscription, or
the chance Of it, by throwing up his
hostler's job in a Wahaska livery sta
BILE and vanishing into the dim limbo
of the farther west. Also, tradition
added that he was well-spared by
most; that he was ill-spared, indeed,
by only one, and that one a woman.
After the westward vanishing, Wa
haska saw him no more until he re-
turned in his vigorous prime, a vete-
ran soldier of fortune upon whom the
goddess had poured golden shower
out of some cornucopia of the Colora-
do mines. Although rumor, occasion
ally naming him during the years of
absence, had never mentioned wife,
he was accompanied by a daughter, a
dark-eyed, red-lipped young woman.
rather striking beauty Of a type un-
familiar to Wahaska and owing moth
ing it would seem, to the grim, gray
wolf Jasper.
Since the time was ripe, Wahaska
did presently burst it's swaddling
bands. Commercial enterprise is sheep
like; where one leads, others will fol-
low; and the mere following breeds
success, If only by the sheer impetus
of the massed forward movement.
Jasper Grierson was the man of the
hour, but the price paid for leader
ship by the led is apt to be high.
When Wahaska became city, with
charter and a bonded debt, electric
lights, waterworks and a trolley sys-
tenn, Grierson's interest predominated
in every considerable business ven-
ture in it, save and excepting the Ray
mer Foundry and Machine works.
He was president of one bank, and
the principal stockholder in the other,
which was practically an allied insti-
tuition; he was the sole owner of the
grain elevator, the saw and planning
mills, the box factory and a dozen
did not appear. Also, it was his mon
ey, or rather his skill as a promoter,
which transformed the Wahaska &
Pineboro railroad from a logging
switch, built to serve the sawmill, into
an important and independent con-
Meeting link in the great lake region
system.
In each of these commercial or in
dustrial chariots the returned native
sat in the drivers seat; and those
who remembered him as a loutish
young farmland overlooked the edu-
cative results of continued success
and marveled at his gifts, wondering
how and where he had acquired them.
While the father was thus crafty
ing a purely Gothic lust for conquest,
the daughter figured, in at least one
small circle, as beautiful young Van
dal with a passion for overturning all
the well-settled traditions. At first
her attitude toward Wahaska and the
Wahaskans had been serenely toler-
ant the tolerance Of the barbarian who
neither understands, nor sympathizes
with the homely virtues and the Gus
toms which have grown out of them.
Then resentment awoke, and with it
soaring ambition to reconstruct the
social fabric of the countrified town
upon a model Of her own devising.
In this charitable undertaking she
was aided and abetted by her father,
who indulgently paid the bills. At her
instigation he built an imposing red
brick mansion on the sloping shore Of
Lake Minnedaska, named it-or suf-
fered her to name it-"Mereside," had
an artist of parts up from Chicago to
design the decorations and superin-
tend the furnishings, had landscape
gardener from Philadelphia to lay
out the grounds, and when all was in
readiness, gave a housewarming to
which the invitations were in some
sense mandatory, since by that time
he had a finger in nearly every COM
mercial and industrial pie in Wahaska.
But there were still obstacles to be
surmounted. From the first there had
been a perverse minority refusing
stubbornly to bow the head in the
house of-Grierson. The Farnhams
were of it, and the Raymers. with a
following of a few Of the families
called "old" as age is reckoned in the
middle west. The men of this minor
ity were slow to admit the omnipo-
tence of Jasper Grierson's money and
the women were still slower to accept
Miss Grierson on terms Of social equal
ity.
At the housewarming this minority
had been represented only by various
" worded regrets. At a reception
given to mark the closing of Mereside,
socially, on the eve Of Miss Margery's
departure for the winter in Florida,
the regrets were still polite and still
unanimous. Miss Margery laughed
defiantly and set her white teeth on a
determined resolution to reduce this
inner citadel of conservatism at all
costs Accordingly, she opened the
campaign on the morning after the
reception: began it at the breakfast
table when she was pouring her faith
er'S coffee.