edish, which gave him a great advantage with the early
Scandinavian settlers.

In every frontier settlement there are men who have come there to escape
restraint. Cutter was one of the 'fast set' of Black Hawk business men.
He was an inveterate gambler, though a poor loser. When we saw a light
burning in his office late at night, we knew that a game of poker was
going on. Cutter boasted that he never drank anything stronger than
sherry, and he said he got his start in life by saving the money that
other young men spent for cigars. He was full of moral maxims for
boys. When he came to our house on business, he quoted 'Poor Richard's
Almanack' to me, and told me he was delighted to find a town boy who
could milk a cow. He was particularly affable to grandmother, and
whenever they met he would begin at once to talk about 'the good old
times' and simple living. I detested his pink, bald head, and his yellow
whiskers, always soft and glistening. It was said he brushed them every
night, as a woman does her hair. His white teeth looked factory-made.
His skin was red and rough, as if from perpetual sunburn; he often went
away to hot springs to take mud baths. He was notoriously dissolute with
women. Two Swedish girls who had lived in his house were the worse for
the experience. One of them he had taken to Omaha and established in the
business for which he had fitted her. He still visited her.

Cutter lived in a state of perpetual warfare with his wife, and yet,
apparently, they never thought of separating. They dwelt in a fussy,
scroll-work house, painted white and buried in thick evergreens, with
a fussy white fence and barn. Cutter thought he knew a great deal about
horses, and usually had a colt which he was training for the track.
On Sunday mornings one could see him out at the fair grounds, speeding
around the race-course in his trotting-buggy, wearing yellow gloves and
a black-and-white-check travelling cap, his whiskers blowing back in the
breeze. If there were any boys about, Cutter would offer one of them
a quarter to hold the stop-watch, and then drive off, saying he had no
change and would 'fix it up next time.' No one could cut his lawn or
wash his buggy to suit him. He was so fastidious and prim about his
place that a boy would go to a good deal of trouble to throw a dead cat
into his back yard, or to dump a sackful of tin cans in his alley. It
was a peculiar combination of old-maidishness and licentiousness that