ing to make a
whole town in this Colonial architecture you talk about----I do love
nice things; to this day I run ribbons into my petticoats, even if
Champ Perry does laugh at me, the old villain! But just the same I don't
believe any of us old-timers would like to see the town that we worked
so hard to build being tore down to make a place that wouldn't look like
nothing but some Dutch story-book and not a bit like the place we loved.
And don't you think it's sweet now? All the trees and lawns? And such
comfy houses, and hot-water heat and electric lights and telephones
and cement walks and everything? Why, I thought everybody from the Twin
Cities always said it was such a beautiful town!"

Carol forswore herself; declared that Gopher Prairie had the color of
Algiers and the gaiety of Mardi Gras.

Yet the next afternoon she was pouncing on Mrs. Lyman Cass, the
hook-nosed consort of the owner of the flour-mill.

Mrs. Cass's parlor belonged to the crammed-Victorian school, as Mrs.
Luke Dawson's belonged to the bare-Victorian. It was furnished on two
principles: First, everything must resemble something else. A rocker had
a back like a lyre, a near-leather seat imitating tufted cloth, and
arms like Scotch Presbyterian lions; with knobs, scrolls, shields, and
spear-points on unexpected portions of the chair. The second principle
of the crammed-Victorian school was that every inch of the interior must
be filled with useless objects.

The walls of Mrs. Cass's parlor were plastered with "hand-painted"
pictures, "buckeye" pictures, of birch-trees, news-boys, puppies, and
church-steeples on Christmas Eve; with a plaque depicting the Exposition
Building in Minneapolis, burnt-wood portraits of Indian chiefs of no
tribe in particular, a pansy-decked poetic motto, a Yard of Roses, and
the banners of the educational institutions attended by the Casses' two
sons--Chicopee Falls Business College and McGillicuddy University. One
small square table contained a card-receiver of painted china with a rim
of wrought and gilded lead, a Family Bible, Grant's Memoirs, the latest
novel by Mrs. Gene Stratton Porter, a wooden model of a Swiss chalet
which was also a bank for dimes, a polished abalone shell holding one
black-headed pin and one empty spool, a velvet pin-cushion in a gilded
metal slipper with "Souvenir of Troy, N. Y." stamped on the toe, and an
unexplained red glass dish which had warts.

Mrs. Cass's first remark was, "I must s