are all fools,--hey?"

"Will you come again, Uncle Peter?" I asked eagerly. I had set out to
offer Uncle Peter a cup of niecely affection, and I had got a good,
stiff bracer to arouse me in return.

"I will, whenever I can escape Augusta," he answered, and there was such
a kindly crackle in his voice that I felt that he had wanted and needed
what I had offered him. "I'll drop in often and analyze the annals of
the town with you. Glad to have you home, child, good young blood to
stir me up--hey?"

And as I sat and watched the Mayor go saunteringly down the street, with
his crustiness carried like a child on his shoulder, which it delighted
him to have knocked off, so that he could philosophize in the restoring
of it to its position, suddenly a realization of the relation of
Glendale to the world in general was forced upon me--and I quailed.

Glendale is like a dozen other small towns in the Harpeth Valley; they
are all drowsy princesses who have just waked up enough to be wondering
what did it. The tentative kiss has not yet disclosed the presence of
the Prince of Revolution, and they are likely to doze for another
century or two. I think I had better go back into the wide world and let
them sleep on. One live member is likely to irritate the repose of the
whole body.

Their faint stirrings of progress are pathetic.

They have an electric plant, but, as I have noted before, the lights
therefrom show a strong trace of their pine-knot heredity, and go out on
all important occasions, whether of festivity or tragedy. Kerosene lamps
have to be kept filled and cleaned if a baby or a revival or a lawn
festival is expected.

They have a lovely, wide concrete pavement in front of six of the stores
around the public square, but no two stretches of the improvement join
each other, and it makes a shopping progression around the town somewhat
dangerous, on account of the sudden change of grade of the sidewalk,
about every sixty feet. Aunt Augusta wanted Uncle Peter to introduce a
bill in the City Council forcing all of the property owners on the
Square to put down the pavement in front of their houses, at small
payments per annum, the town assuming the contract at six per cent.
Uncle Peter refused, because he said that he felt a smooth walk around
the Square would call out what he called "a dimity parade" every
afternoon.

They have a water system that is supplied by so much mud from the river
that it often happens that the