The Aberdeen weekly. [volume] (Aberdeen, Miss.) 1878-1933, 1919-12-19

get hurt himself, keeping her from any
| possible harm.
She shook the picture out of her
eyes Indignantly. tlien 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 al the
dances of the winter; new faces had
been appearing everywhere. for tina;
matter, and familiar ones were diSap-
pearing. merged in the increasing
crowd. or gone forever and missed
little and not long; for the town was
growing and changing as ii never had
grown and changed before.
1t was heaving up In the middle in
credibly; ii was spreading Incredibly
and as IT heaved and spread. IT be-
fouled itself and darkened its sky.
You drove between plea SAINT 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
moving in Gasoline and electricity
We're 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 veneer
able and was little needed. what hap
pened to Boston and to Broadway hap
pened in degree to the Midland ciry
the old stock became less and less typ
ical, and of rhe grown people who
called the place home, less than
third had been born in IL.
A new spirit of citizenship had al
ready sharply defined itself. 1t was
idealistic. and It's ideals were eX-
pressed in the new kind CT young men
in business downtown. They were OPP
tiinists-optimists to the point of bel
: ligerence-their motto being Boost
Don't Knock 7" And the, were hus-
tiers, believing I'm hustling and in hon
esty because both paid. They loved
I 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 far
as To struggle for better government on
account of the helpful effect of good
! governw ent on the price of real estate
and "be1terment" generally; the politi-
clans could not go too far with them.
and knew 1t. The idealists planned and
strOve and shouted that their city
should become a better, better. and
I better city-and what they meant,
when they used the word better" was
''more prosperous" and the core of
their feealism was this: "The more
I prosperous my. beloved city. the more
prosperous beloved L."
These were bad times for ANDERSON
addition. This quarter. already old, lay
/ within 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 lett out. The
owners of the original big houses sold
\ them, or rented them to boarding house
/ keepers. and the tenants of the multi
4 tude of small houses moved farther
out" (where the smoke was thinner)
or into apartment houses, which were
built by dozens now. Cheaper tes&Ets
/ took their places, and the rents We're
lower and lower, and the houses shah
/ 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 Gas they would ever look and
I 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
We're crazy for apartments-too bad
he couldn't have seen it in time. Poor
man he digs away at his ledgers by
| his old gas drop-light lamp almost
every night-he still refuses to let the
Mansion he torn up for wiring. you
know. But he had one painful salts
faction this spring: he got his taxes
! lowered.
Anderson laughed ruefully. and Fan
ny Minafer asked how the Major could
have managed such an economy. They
were sitting upon the veranda at 1sa-
bells one evening during the third sum-
mer of the absence of their nephew
and his mother; and the conversation
had turned toward Anderson finances.
II said it was painful satisfaction
Fanny" he explained. 1.-The property
has gone down in value. and they as
sessed 1t lower than they did fifteen
years ago."
"But farther cut"
"Oh. yes. farther outr Prices are
magnificent farther OUT and farther
in. too! We just happen to be the
wrong spot. that's all. Not that
don't think something could he done II
father would let me have hand; but
he won't. He cant, suppose ought
to say He's always done his own f1g-
uring. he says; and It's his lifelong
habit to keep his affairs, and even his