nt on.

"Tolliver thinks," said he, in another letter, "that the Angus Falls
extension can be pulled through. However, I recall that only yesterday
the Captain, in private, denounced the citizens of Lattimore as beneath
the contempt of gentlemen of breadth of view. 'I shall dispose of my
holdin's hyah,' said he, with a stately sweep indicative of their
extent, 'at any sacrifice, and depaht, cuhsin' the day I devoted myself
to the redemption of such cattle.'

"But, at that particular moment, he had just failed in an attempt to
sell Bill Trescott a bunch of choice outlying gold bricks, and was
somewhat heated with wine. This to the haughty Southron was ample
excuse for confiding to me the round, unvarnished truth about us
mudsills.

"Josie and I often talk of you and your wife. I don't know what I'd do
out here if it weren't for Josie. She refuses to enthuse over our
'natural, healthy growth,' which we look for; but I guess that's because
she doesn't care for the things that the rest of us are striving for.
But she's the only person here with whom one can really converse. You'd
be astonished to see how pretty she is in her furs, and set like a jewel
in my new sleigh; but I'm becoming keenly aware of the fact."

We were afterwards told that the trilobites had shaken off their
fossilhood, and that the Angus Falls extension, with the engine-house
and machine-shops, had been "landed."

"This," he wrote, "means enough new families to make a noticeable
increase in our population. Things will be popping here soon. Come on
and help shake the popper; hurry up with your moving, or it will all be
over, including the shouting."

We were not entirely dependent upon Jim's letters for Lattimore news.
Mrs. Barslow kept up a desultory correspondence with Miss Trescott,
begun upon some pretext and continued upon none at all. In one of these
letters Josie (for so we soon learned to call her) wrote:

"Our little town is changing so that it no longer seems familiar. Not
that the change is visible. Beyond an unusual number of strangers or
recent comers, there is nothing new to strike the eye. But the talk
everywhere is of a new railroad and other improvements. One needs only
to shut one's eyes and listen, to imagine that the town is already a
real city. Mr. Elkins seems to be the center of this new civic
self-esteem. The air is full of it, and I admit that I am affected by
it. I have

"'A feeling, as when eager crowds await,