The Project Gutenberg EBook of Clark's Field, by Robert Herrick

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Title: Clark's Field

Author: Robert Herrick

Release Date: December 22, 2009 [EBook #30736]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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CLARK'S FIELD

BY ROBERT HERRICK

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1914

COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY ROBERT HERRICK
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published June 1914_

CLARK'S FIELD

The other day I happened to be in the town where I was born and not far
from the commonplace house in the humbler quarter of the town where my
parents were living at the time of my birth, half a century and more
ago. I am not fond of my native town, although I lived in the place
until I was seventeen or eighteen years old. It was never a
distinguished spot and seems to have gained nothing as yet from having
been my birthplace. It has some reputation of its own, however, but that
is due to the enduring popularity of a certain cookstove that has long
been manufactured there, the "Stearns and Frost Cooker," known to many
housewives of several generations. In my youth the Stearns and Frost
stove works were reputed to be the largest in the world, and most of the
plain citizens of Alton were concerned in one way or another with them.
I do not happen to be interested in the manufacture or sale, or I may
add the use, of the domestic cookstove. As a boy I always thought the
town a dull, ugly sort of place, and although it has grown marvelously
these last thirty years, having been completely surrounded and absorbed
by the neighboring city of B----, it did not seem to me that day when I
revisited it to have grown perceptibly in grace....

Having a couple of spare hours before meeting a dinner engagement, I
descended into a subway and was shot out in less than ten minutes from
the heart of the city to the old "Square" of Alton,--a journey that took
us formerly from half to three quarters of