the-Hudson chewing the rag and bulling and trying to
get your goat, you tell him that no two-fisted enterprising Westerner
would have New York for a gift!
"Now the point of this is: I'm not only insisting that Gopher Prairie
is going to be Minnesota's pride, the brightest ray in the glory of the
North Star State, but also and furthermore that it is right now, and
still more shall be, as good a place to live in, and love in, and bring
up the Little Ones in, and it's got as much refinement and culture, as
any burg on the whole bloomin' expanse of God's Green Footstool, and
that goes, get me, that goes!"
Half an hour later Chairman Haydock moved a vote of thanks to Mr.
Blausser.
The boosters' campaign was on.
The town sought that efficient and modern variety of fame which is known
as "publicity." The band was reorganized, and provided by the Commercial
Club with uniforms of purple and gold. The amateur baseball-team hired a
semi-professional pitcher from Des Moines, and made a schedule of games
with every town for fifty miles about. The citizens accompanied it as
"rooters," in a special car, with banners lettered "Watch Gopher Prairie
Grow," and with the band playing "Smile, Smile, Smile." Whether the
team won or lost the Dauntless loyally shrieked, "Boost, Boys, and
Boost Together--Put Gopher Prairie on the Map--Brilliant Record of Our
Matchless Team."
Then, glory of glories, the town put in a White Way. White Ways were in
fashion in the Middlewest. They were composed of ornamented posts with
clusters of high-powered electric lights along two or three blocks on
Main Street. The Dauntless confessed: "White Way Is Installed--Town
Lit Up Like Broadway--Speech by Hon. James Blausser--Come On You Twin
Cities--Our Hat Is In the Ring."
The Commercial Club issued a booklet prepared by a great and expensive
literary person from a Minneapolis advertising agency, a red-headed
young man who smoked cigarettes in a long amber holder. Carol read the
booklet with a certain wonder. She learned that Plover and Minniemashie
Lakes were world-famed for their beauteous wooded shores and gamey pike
and bass not to be equalled elsewhere in the entire country; that
the residences of Gopher Prairie were models of dignity, comfort, and
culture, with lawns and gardens known far and wide; that the Gopher
Prairie schools and public library, in its neat and commodious building,
were celebrated throughout the state; that the Gopher Prairie
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