re of some one
to bring Dick home from the saloon before he drank up the last penny. It
made little difference to her where she earned the family living by
washing.

So they came, one after another, and filled up the town--Abe Cohen, the
Jew clothing dealer, Barringer, the druggist, Dr. Barton, rival of Dr.
Smelter and a far more highly skilled practitioner, Jake O'Flaherty, the
saloon-keeper, Widow Stokes, rag carpet weaver and gossip, Jeremy
Whitling, town carpenter, and his golden-blonde daughter Lucy,
school-teacher, Dr. Sohmer, dentist. Every small community needs these
various souls. No sooner is the earth scraped clean for a new village
than they come, one by one, until the town is complete. So it happened
in Five Points until there came to be somewhat fewer than a thousand
souls. There the town stood.

Stores and offices completely took up the circle of Main Street and
straggled a little down the residence streets. Under the fringe of trees
business hummed where side by side flourished Grimes' meat shop, the
drug store with the dentist's office above, Henderson's General Store,
as the Company store was called, Brinker's grocery store, the Clothing
Emporium, McGilroy's barber shop, Backus' hardware, and the post office.
The Five Points _Argus_ issued weekly its two pages from the dingy
office behind the drug store. Graham's Livery did a big business down
near the station.

Each church had gathered its own rightful members within its round of
Sunday and mid-week services, its special observances on Christmas, and
Easter, and Children's Day. In the spring of each year a one-ring circus
encamped for a day on the common ground in the centre of the town and
drew all the people in orderly array under its tent. On the Fourth of
July the whole town again came together in the centre common, in fashion
less orderly, irrespective of creed or money worth, celebrating the
deeds of their ancestors by drinking lemonade and setting off
firecrackers.

After a while no one could remember when it had been any different.
Those who came to town as little children grew into gawky youths knowing
no more about other parts of the world than their geography books told
them. When any one died, a strand in the Life hanging above the town
broke and flapped in the wind, growing more and more frayed with the
passing of time, until after a year or so its tatters were noticeable
only as a sort of roughness upon the pattern. When a child was