Bogalusa enterprise and American. (Bogalusa, La.) 1918-19??, 1919-12-25

her heart. The dim street below her
window, the dark houses across the
way, the vague air itself-all looked
empty, and cold and (most of alp I'M
Something more sombre
than November dusk took the color
from them and gave them that air Of
desertion.
The light Of her fire, Pickering up
behind her, showed suddenly a flying
group of tiny Notwithstanding the
window-pane; and for an instant she
felt the sensation of being dragged
through a snow-drift under a broken
cutter, with boys arms about her
an arrogant, handsome, too-conquering
boy, who nevertheless did his best to
get hurt himself, keeping her from any
possible harm.
She shook the picture out Of her
eyes Indignantly, then came and sat
before her fire, and looked long and
long at the blackened mantelpiece.
She did not have the mantelpiece re-
painted-and, since she did not,
might as well have kept his photo
graphs. One forgets what made the
scar upon his hand but not what made
the scar upon his wall.
New faces appeared at the
dances of the winter; new faces had
been appearing everywhere, for that
matter, and familiar ones were disap-
pearing, merged in the increasing
crowd, or gone forever and missed a
little and not long; for the town was
growing and changing as it never had
grown and changed before.
It was heaving up in the middle in
credibly; it was spreading Incredibly
and as it heaved and spread, 1T be-
fouled itself and darkened its sky.
You drove between pleasant fields and
woodland groves one spring day; and
in the autumn, passing over the same
ground, you were warned off the tracks
by an interurban trolley-car's gong
ing, and beheld, beyond cement side
walks just dry, new house-owners busy
knowing in" Gasoline and electricity
were performing the miracles Eugene
had predicted.
But the great change was in the
citizenry itself. What was left Of the
patriotic old-stock generation that had
fought the Civil war, and subsequently
controlled politics, had become vener-
able and was little needed. What hap
,oox,o5 81 DoeEoY, opd RI Proa6xuou hon.
pened in degree to the Midland city {;
the old stock became less and less typ
ical, and of the grown people who
called the place home, less than a
third had been born in it.
A new spirit of citizenship had al
ready sharply defined itself. 1t was
idealistic, and its ideals were ex-
pressed in the new kind Of young men
in business downtown. They were OPP
tiinists-optimist to the point of bel
ligerence-tTleir motto being ''BOost
Don't Knockw And they were hus-
tiers, believing in hustling and in hon
esty because both paid. They loved
| their city and worked for it with a
plutonic energy which was always ar
IDENTIFY vocal. They were viciously gov
erned, but they sometimes went so fal
as to struggle for better government or
account of the helpful effect of good
/ government on the price Of real estate
and "betterment" generally; the politi
clans could not go too far with them
and knew it. The idealists planned and
kstrove and shouted that their city
should become a better, better, anc
i better city--and what they meant
when they used the word ''better," was
"more prosperous" and the core o.
their idealism was this: ''The more
prosperous my beloved city, the more
prosperous beloved Ip'
These were bad times for Anderson
addition. This quarter, already old, la!
within mile of the center of thu
town, but business moved in Othe
directions and the Additions share O
Prosperity was only the smoke ant
dirt, with the bank credit left out. TIL,
owners of the original big houses sol'
them. or rented them to boarding
keepers, and the tenants of the multi
tude Of small houses moved "farthe
OUT (where the smoke was thinner
or into apartment houses, which wer
built by dozens now. Cheaper tenant
took their places, and the rents wer
lower and lower, and the houses shah
bier and shabbier-for all these shabb
houses, burning soft coal, did thei
best to help In the destruction of thei
own value. Distances had ceased t
matter.
The five new houses, built so closet
where had been the fine lawn Of tn
Anderson mansion, did not look new
When they were year old they locke
as old as they would ever look; an
two of them were vacant, having neve
been rented, for the Majors mistak
about apartment houses had been
disastrous one. "He guessed wrong,
George Anderson said. "He guesse
wrong at Just the wrong time! Peopl
were crazy for apartments-too ba
he couldn't have seen it in time. Poo
mani he digs away at his ledgers b