Main Street

ry a traveling representative of an insurance company. They made a specialty of sandwich-salad-coffee lap suppers, and they regarded Carol as their literary and artistic representativ

burys admiring and

l of the flat, and exploded into the green-plush living-room. The familiar group were trying to be conversational. She saw Mr. Marbury, a woman teacher of gymnastics in a high school, a chief clerk from the Great Northern Railway offices

. Will Kennicott of Gopher Prairie. He does all our insurance-examin

ticular, Carol remembered that Gopher Prairie was a Minnesot

hand was strong; the palm soft, but the back weat

r she had heated the rolls and passed the paper napkins, Mr. Marbury captured her with a loud, "Oh, quit fussing now. Come over here and sit down and tell us how's tricks." He herded her to a so

ary. I was surprised. Didn't hardly think you were old e

to take to a lip-stick, and to f

ly old-prob'ly too old to b

rs; precisely thus, and not in honeyed pentameters, discour

e your work?" a

rom things-the steel stacks, and the everlastin

get sick of

r view than when you stand on Summit Avenue and look across Lo

ill, oh well, you don't get to know folks here, way you do up home. I feel I've got something to say about running Gopher Prairie, but you take it in a big city of

ar it's a ver

own that had such up-and-coming people as Gopher Prairie. Bresnahan-you know-the famous auto manufacturer-he comes from Gopher Prairie. Born and brought up there! And it's a darn pretty town. Lots of fine maples and box-elders, an

all

thinking of S

wheat land in the state right near there-some of it selling right now at o

like your

, and yet you have a chance to

I mean-it's such an op

ese Dutch farmers don't want sympathy. All t

nt you to think I'm one of these old salts-and-quinine peddlers, but I mean: so m

ty, if he wanted to-if he saw it. He's usually the only man i

t of obstetrics and typhoid and busted legs. What we need is women

ng just that, curiously enough, but I seem to have drifted

minine charm. Say! Don't you think there's a lot of these women

pted him as one who had a right to know what she thought and wore and ate and read. He was positive. He had grown from a sketched-in stranger to a frie

ered, "Say, what do you two think you're doing? Telling fortunes or making love? Let me warn you that the doc i

r word with Dr. Kennico

ee you some time when I come down again? I'm here quite o

hy

your a

next time you come down-i

now? Say,

here is nothing to be told which may not be hear

arm took her shoulder. All the beauty of youth, first discovered when it is passing-and all the commonplaceness of a well-to-do unmarried ma

money, but she was sure that he did not lie to patients, and that he did keep up with the medical m

, mounting from low banks to a palisade of cliffs. Far down beneath it on the St. Paul side, upon mud flats, is a wild settlement of chicken-infested gardens and shanties patched together from discarded sign-boards, sheets of corrugated iron, and planks fished out of the river. Carol leaned over the rail of the bridge to look d

ed back at St. Paul on its hills; an imperial sweep from

ce is ancient. Here is the bold stone house which General Sibley, the king of fur-traders, built in 1835, with plaster of river mud, and ropes of twisted grass for laths. It has an air of centuries. In its solid rooms C

hey trudged on. They crossed the Minnesota River in a rowboat ferry. They climbed the hill to the round stone tower of Fort Snelling. They saw the junction o

s make it all that those old boys dreamed about

et

mighty pretty, but I'll admit we aren't any too darn artistic. Probably the lumber-

like to.

and gardening the past few years, and it's so homey-the big trees

names. She could not fancy thei

; and if you want culture, besides Vida Sherwin there's Reverend Warren, the Congregational preacher, and Professor Mott, the superintendent of schools, and Guy Pollock, the lawyer-they say he writes regular poetry and-and Raymie Wutherspoon, he's not such an aw

He circled her shoulder with his arm. Relaxed after the walk, a chill nipping h

in love with

touched the back of his ha

istic. How can I help it, unl

nswer. She co

a person. Well, you cure the town of whatever ails i

words, only the burri

cried, "There's no use saying things and saying thin

ught to be angry, but it was a drifting tho

, pretending that they had never been n

would like to see

s! Brought some snaps

er reflecting wooded bluffs, a flight of ducks, a fisherman in shirt sleeves and a wide straw hat, holding up a string of croppies. One winter picture of the edge of Plover Lake had the air of a

r go zinging along on a fast ice-boat, and skip back

ght be

icture. Here's wh

, a clumsy log cabin chinked with mud and roofed with hay. In front of it a sag

corking farm in ten years, but now--I operated his wife on a kitchen table, with my driver giving the anesthetic. Look at tha

Oh, it would be sweet

er she answered all her do