One evening, while the historical edition was growing, a
reporter spent the evening with "Aunt" Martha. The talk drifted back to
the early days, and "Aunt" Martha mentioned Balderson. To identify him
she went to her scrapbook, and as she was turning the pages she said:

"In those days of the early seventies, before the railroad came, when
the town awoke in the morning and found a newly arrived covered waggon
near a neighbour's house, it always meant that kin had come. If at
school that day the children from the house of visitation bragged about
their relatives, expatiating upon the power and riches that they left
back East, the town knew that the visitors were ordinary kin; but if the
children from the afflicted household said little about the visitors and
evidently tried to avoid telling just who they were, then the town knew
that the strangers were poor kin--probably some of "his folks"; for it
was well understood that the women in this town all came from high
connections 'back East' in Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa. Newcomers
sometimes wondered how such a galaxy of princesses and duchesses and
ladyships happened to marry so far beneath their station.

"But the Dixons had no children, so when a covered waggon drove up to
their place in the night, and a fussy, pussy little man with a dingy,
stringy beard, appeared in the Dixons' back yard in the morning, looking
after the horses hitched to the strange waggon; the town had to wait
until the next week's issue of the _Statesman_ to get reliable news
about their prospective fellow-citizen." With that "Aunt" Martha opened
her scrapbook and read a clipping from the _Statesman_, under the head,
"A Valuable Acquisition to Our City." It ran:

"It has been many months since we have been favoured with a call from so
cultured and learned a gentleman as the Hon. Andoneran P. Balderson,
late of Quito, Hancock County, Iowa, who has finally determined to
settle in our midst. Cramped by the irritating conventionalities of an
effete civilisation, Colonel Balderson comes among us for that larger
freedom and wider horizon which his growing powers demand. He comes with
the ripened experience of a jurist, a soldier, and a publicist, and,
when transportation facilities have been completed between this and the
Missouri River, Judge Balderson will bring to our little city his
magnificent law library; but until then he will be found over the Elite
Oyster Bay, where he will be glad to welco