The Connecticut labor press., 1919-11-29

boy, who neVertheleSS QlQ ms pest u get hurt himself, keeping her fSOEa an1 possible harm.
 She shook the picturS out of her eyes indignantly, thP rstme and sat before her fire, anu looked long and | long at the blackened mantelpiece.
 She did not have the mantelpiece re painted-and, since she did not
 might as we'll 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; 1t was spreading incredibly ; and as 1t 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 pened to Boston and to Broadway hap pened in degree to the Midland city; the old stock became less and less typ icnl, 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. It was idealistic, and it's ideals were ex pressed in the new kind Of young men in business downtown. They were Op- tilniStS-Optimists to the point of bel ligerence-rheir motto being "Boost Don't Knock" 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- Ctans could not go too far with them, ard 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 boarding-house keepers, and the tenants of the multi tude of small houses moved farther out" (where the smoke was thinner) or into apartment houses. which were built by dozens now. Cheaper tenants took their places, and the rents were lower and lower, and the houses shab- ct AnA 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. Poo: man! he digs away at his ledgers by his old gas drop-light lamp almost every night-he still refuses to let the Mansion be torn up for wiring, you know. But he had one painful satiS- 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 Isa- bel's one evening during the third sum- mer of the absence of their nephew and his mother; and the conversation had turned toward Anderson finances.
 'T said it was a painful satisfaction Fanny" he explained. "The property has gone down in value, and they as- sessed it lower than they did fifteen years ago."
 But farther out"
 "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 be done if father would let me have a hand; but he won't. He can't, I suppose I ought to say. He's always done his own fig uring,' he says; and it's his lifelong habit to keep his affairs, and even his books, to himself and just hand us out the money. Heaven knows he's