ber afternoon when he
drove us through the streets of our future home to the principal hotel.

"We have supper at six, dinner at twelve-thirty, breakfast from seven to
ten," said Jim, as we alighted at the hotel. "That's the sort of bucolic
municipality you've struck here; we'll shove all these meals several
hours down, when we get to doubling our population. You'll have an hour
to get freshened up for supper. Afterwards, if Mrs. Barslow feels equal
to the exertion, we'll take a drive about the town."

Lattimore was a pretty place then. Low, rounded hills topped with green
surrounded it. The river flowed in a broad, straight reach along its
southern margin. A clear stream, Brushy Creek, ran in a miniature
canyon of limestone, through the eastern edge of the town. On each side
of this brook, in lawns of vivid green, amid natural groves of oak and
elm, interspersed with cultivated greenery, stood the houses of the
well-to-do. Trees made early twilight in most of the streets.

People were out in numbers, driving in the cool autumnal evening. As a
handsome girl, a splendid blonde, drove past us, my wife spoke of the
excellent quality of the horseflesh we saw. Jim answered that Lattimore
was a center of equine culture, and its citizens wise in breeders' lore.
The appearance of things impressed us favorably. There was an air of
quiet prosperity about the place, which is unusual in Western towns,
where quietude and progress are apt to be thought incompatible. Jim
pointed out the town's natural advantages as we drove along.

"What do you think of that, now?" said he, waving his whip toward the
winding gorge of Brushy Creek.

"It's simply lovely!" said Alice, "a little jewel of a place."

"A bit of mountain scenery on the prairie," said Jim. "And more than
that, or less than that, just as you look at it, it's the source from
which inexhaustible supplies of stone will be quarried when we begin to
build things."

"But won't that spoil it?" said Alice.

"Well, yes; and down on that bottom we've found as good clay for
pottery, sewer-pipes, and paving-brick as exists anywhere. Back there
where you saw that bluff along the river--looks as if it's sliding down
into the water--remember it? Well, there's probably the only place in
the world where there's just the juxtaposition of sand and clay and
chalk to make Portland cement. Supply absolutely unlimited! Why, there
ought to be a thousand men employed right now in those cement w