wering smiles, as the kind
old face beamed on them. Chauffeurs and drivers of stylish carriages
politely gave us the road, and so we jogged into the little square,
the heart of the town. The park was in its spring raiment of young
leaves and grass, and the waters of the fountain sparkled in the
sunshine.

"It's the prettiest little town in the State," said Aunt Jane proudly.

"Where shall we go first?" I asked.

"There's one place in this town where all us country folks goes
first," said Aunt Jane oracularly, "and that's the old drug-store on
the corner yonder. Let the mare alone, and she'll go right there
without guidin'."

And so she did, stopping at a corner of the square before a
three-story brick building with none of the usual signs of a
drug-store about it. Aunt Jane stepped out to make her purchases, and
I stayed in the buggy to hold the horse, an unnecessary precaution,
for old Nelly at once dropped her head in a drowsy, meditative way
that showed she had no intention of leaving the familiar
stopping-place.

I heard a cheery voice within giving Aunt Jane an old friend's
greeting, and while she made her purchases and gossiped with the
proprietor over the high, old-fashioned counter, I stared into the
dark, dingy vista of the ancient store. The stone door-step, hollowed
like the steps to the Blarney stone, had borne the steady tread of
feet for sixty years, and the floor within was worn in the same way.
At the far end of the store, I discerned a group of elderly men. Some
were seated on packing-boxes, conveniently placed around the store for
the use of those who desired to stay a while to rest and whittle;
others reposed on the small of their backs in rickety, splint-bottomed
chairs tilted against the wall, their feet on the rounds of the
chairs, their knees on a level with their chins, and about them an air
of profound repose that showed them to be as much a part of the store
as the old iron stove. The window proclaimed the place the den of an
archaeologist, for it was filled with arrow-heads neatly mounted on
pasteboard, Indian pottery, petrifactions, stone hammers, tomahawks,
relics of aboriginal and prehistoric man that the mounds and caves of
Kentucky yield up to the seeker of such buried treasure. Both within
and without, the old store was like an embodiment of conservatism
standing unmoved while the swift currents of modern progress were
sweeping around it and beating against it.

While I was gazi