ence is so safe, so sane, so sure. Fanny knew that when
she turned the corner of Elm Street every third person she met would
speak to her. Life was made up of minute details, too trivial for the
notice of the hurrying city crowds. You knew when Milly Glaenzer changed
the baby buggy for a go-cart. The youngest Hupp boy--Sammy--who was
graduated from High School in June, is driving A. J. Dawes's automobile
now. My goodness, how time flies! Doeppler's grocery has put in
plate-glass windows, and they're getting out-of-season vegetables every
day now from Milwaukee. As you pass you get the coral glow of tomatoes,
and the tender green of lettuces. And that vivid green? Fresh young
peas! And in February. Well! They've torn down the old yellow brick
National Bank, and in its place a chaste Greek Temple of a building
looks rather contemptuously down its classic columns upon the farmer's
wagons drawn up along the curb. If Fanny Brandeis' sense of proportion
had not been out of plumb she might have realized that, to Winnebago,
the new First National Bank building was as significant and epochal as
had been the Woolworth Building to New York.

The very intimacy of these details, Fanny argued, was another reason for
leaving Winnebago. They were like detaining fingers that grasped at your
skirts, impeding your progress.

She had early set about pulling every wire within her reach that might
lead, directly or indirectly, to the furtherance of her ambition. She
got two offers from Milwaukee retail stores. She did not consider them
for a moment. Even a Chicago department store of the second grade (one
of those on the wrong side of State Street) did not tempt her. She knew
her value. She could afford to wait. There was money enough on which to
live comfortably until the right chance presented itself. She knew every
item of her equipment, and she conned them to herself greedily:
Definite charm of manner; the thing that is called magnetism; brains;
imagination; driving force; health; youth; and, most precious of all,
that which money could not buy, nor education provide--experience.
Experience, a priceless weapon, that is beaten into shape only by
much contact with men and women, and that is sharpened by much rubbing
against the rough edges of this world.

In April her chance came to her; came in that accidental, haphazard way
that momentous happenings have. She met on Elm Street a traveling man
from whom Molly Brandeis had bought for yea