Cleveland County herald., 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 un- interesting. Something more sombre than November dusk took the color from them and gave them that air of assertion.
 The light of her fire, f1ickering up behind her, showed suddenly a flying group of tiny Snowflakes nearing the Window-pane; and for an instant she felt the sensation of being dragged through a snow-drift under a broken cutter, with a 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- bearing, merged in the increasing crowd, or gone forever and missed 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 it, be- fouled itself and darkened it's 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-cars gong ing, and beheld, beyond cement side walks just dry, new house-owners busy moving in." Gasoline and electricity were performing the miracles Eugene had predicted.
 | 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- pened to Boston and to Broadway hap pened in degree to the Midland city; the old stock became less and less typ I of thn called the place home, less than a third had been born in it.
 A new spirit of citizenship had al- ready sharply defined itself. It was ! idealistic, and it's ideals were ex- pressed in the new kind of young men | in business downtown. They were op- tiinists-optimists to the point of bel ligerence-their motto being Boost | Don't Knock P 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 | dently vocal. They were viciously gov erned, but they sometimes went so far as to struggle for better government on | 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 strove and shouted that their city should become a better, better, and better city-and what they meant, when they used the word better" was more prosperous" and the core of their idealism was this: "The more prosperous my beloved city, the more prosperous beloved IT"
 These were bad times for Anderson addition. This quarter, already old, lay ! within a mile of the center of the town, but business moved in other directions; and the Additions share of Prosperity was only the smoke and dirt, with the bank credit left out. The owners of the original big houses sold them, or rented them to clearinghouse keepers, and the tenants of the multi l tude of small houses moved farther out" (where the smoke was thinner) or into apartment houses, which were built by dozens now. Cheaper tenants l took their places, and the rents were | lower and lower, and the houses shab- bier and shabbier-for all these shabby houses, burning soft coal, did their best to help in the destruction of their own value. Distances had ceased to matter.
 The five new houses, built so closely where had been the fine lawn of the Anderson mansion, did not look new When they were year old they looked as old as they would ever look and two of them were vacant, having never been rented, for the Majors mistake about apartment houses had been a disastrous one. "He guessed wrong" George Anderson said. He guessed wrong at just the wrong time! People were crazy for apartments-too bad he couldn't have seen it in time. Poor