's obituary.

Miss Larrabee says that the death of Ezra Worthington marks such a
distinct epoch in the social life of the town that we must set down
here--even if the narrative of the Conklins halts for a moment--how the
Worthingtons rose and flourished. Julia Neal, the eldest daughter of
Thomas Neal--who lost the "O" before his name somewhere between the
docks of Dublin and the west bank of the Missouri River--was for ten
years principal of the ward school in that part of our town known as
"Arkansaw," where her term of service is still remembered as the "reign
of terror." It was said of her then that she could whip any man in the
ward--and would do it if he gave her a chance. The same manner which
made the neighbors complain that Julia Neal carried her head too high,
later in life, when she had money to back it, gave her what the women of
the State Federation called a "regal air." In her early thirties she
married Ezra Worthington, bachelor, twenty years her senior. Ezra
Worthington was at that time, had been for twenty years before, and
continued to be until his death, proprietor of the Worthington Poultry
and Produce Commission Company. He was owner of the stockyards,
president of the Worthington State Bank, vice-president, treasurer and
general manager of the Worthington Mercantile Company, and owner of five
brick buildings on Main Street. He bought one suit of clothes every five
years whether he needed it or not, never let go of a dollar unless the
Goddess of Liberty on it was black in the face, and died rated "at
$350,000" by all the commercial agencies in the country. And the first
thing Mrs. Worthington did after the funeral was to telephone to the
bank and ask them to send her a hundred dollars.

The next important thing she did was to put a heavy, immovable granite
monument over the deceased so that he would not be restless, and then
she built what is known in our town as the Worthington Palace. It makes
the Markley mansion which cost $25,000 look like a barn. The
Worthingtons in the life-time of Ezra had ventured no further into the
social whirl of the town than to entertain the new Presbyterian preacher
at tea, and to lend their lawn to the King's Daughters for a social,
sending a bill in to the society for the eggs used in the coffee and the
gasoline used in heating it.

To the howling dervishes who surrounded Priscilla Winthrop the
Worthingtons were as mere Christian dogs. It was not until three years
a