II

A facetious stranger once remarked that Kingsborough dozed through the
present to dream of the past and found the future a nightmare. Had he
been other than a stranger, he would, perhaps, have added that
Kingsborough's proudest boast was that she had been and was not--a
distinction giving her preeminence over certain cities whose charters
were not received from royal grants--cities priding themselves not only
upon a multiplicity of streets, but upon the more plebeian fact that the
feet of their young men followed the offending thoroughfares to the
undignified music of the march of progress.

But, whatever might be said of places that shall be nameless, it was
otherwise with Kingsborough. Kingsborough was the same yesterday,
to-day, and forever. She who had feasted royal governors, staked and
lost upon Colonial races, and exploded like an ignited powder-horn in
the cause of American independence, was still superbly conscious of the
honours which had been hers. Her governors were no longer royal, nor did
she feast them; her races were run by fleet-footed coloured urchins on
the court-house green; her powder-magazine had evolved through
differentiation from a stable into a church; but Kingsborough clung to
her amiable habits. Travellers still arrived at the landing stage some
several miles distant and were driven over all but impassable roads to
the town. The eastern wall of the court-house still bore the sign
"England Street," though the street had vanished beneath encroaching
buttercups, and the implied loyalty had been found wanting. Kingsborough
juries still sat in their original semicircle, with their backs to the
judge and their faces, presumably, to the law; Kingsborough farmers
still marketed their small truck in the street called after the Duke of
Gloucester; and Kingsborough cows still roamed at will over the vaults
in the churchyard. In time trivial changes would come to pass. Tourists
would arrive with the railroad; the powder-magazine would turn from a
church into a museum; gardens would decay and ancient elms would fall,
but the farmers and the cows would not be missed from their accustomed
haunts. On the hospitable thresholds of "general" stores battle-scarred
veterans of the war between the States dealt in victorious reminiscences
of vanquishment. They had fought well, they had fallen silently, and
they had risen without bitterness. For the people of Kingsborough had
opened their doors to wou