Homeburg Memories

ands Outside the Town and

d tell him anywhere. Do you suppose we could get up nearer? What, go up in the elevator with him? Say, I haven't the nerve. No, I don't wa

as dirt and could have gone up in the same elevator with him, they'll want me to give a le

lect. When you grow up with a chum in New York and he discovers a talent that has been kicking around in his garret ever since he was born, you don't lose him. He just stays at home and grows up to fit the town. But when I want to see my old Homeburg playmates

d forget to come back make us sad and sore. No sooner does a Homeburg man begin to broaden out and get successful and to hoist the town upward as he climbs himself, than we begin to grieve. We know what is coming. Presently he will go down to the Democrat office and insert a notice, advertising for sale a seven-room house with gas an

ll pride for nothing, and would pay some youngster a quarter to hustle baggage at the depot in his absence. And suppose the Congregational choir still had Mary Saunders! Why, we could charge a dollar a seat for ordinary services, and people would come down from Chicago to attend! When I think what she gets for one concert now, and then think how long the Ladies' Aid Society has been working to paint the church and haven't made it yet, it makes me wish we could put Homeburg on wheels and haul it after some of ou

ive tango teas for your four hundred and only allow the better quality of them to pay him twenty-five dollars per cup at that? But the career that amuses me most is Jack Nixon-"Shinner" Nixon, we used to call him. He commands a battleship for a living now; and Homeburg is exactly seven miles from the nearest stream that is navi

y to get a county surveyor or coroner on the ticket every four years. Samuel P. Wiggins, who now lives in a stone hut covering an acre in Chicago and owns a flock of flour mills, was once Sam Wiggins, who bought grain in our town and married the daughter of one of our most reliable washerwomen. She co

pirit of a little bunch of prosperous Homeburg people who lived at the end of Milk Street-we used to call it the cream end of Milk Street. When they were with us, Homeburg was called the Athens of the Steenth Congressional District. We heard singers and lecturers, who jumped towns of fifty thousand on either side of us. We had state presidents of Women's Federations and Church Societies

e culture instead of giving away all they had. They left a chasm in our midst as big as the Grand Canyon. It never has been filled-for me at least. I feel, when I wander up that fin

ok the shadows out of the corners as they went out, I would give them a letter from a son, way off somewhere, making good. The best of them didn't write any too often. Once a week is pretty regular, I suppose, from the other end; but you should see the mother begin to come in hungry again the second day after her letter came. And when a boy came home successful and prosperous, and his

tting intimately acquainted with the thirties-fine girls, still pretty, bright, and keeping up with the world. Young men come into town and do their best to get on a "thou-beside-me" footing, but somehow the girls don't seem to marry. At the root of almost every case there's an old Homeburg boy. Maybe he's making good somewhere, and they're both waiting until he

nd careless frivolity which was as good as a show for every one in town except Sam, who couldn't see through it. That's one of our small town assets-you get to look on at most of the love affairs. We watched Minnie and Sam with our hearts in our mouths for fear she'd carry it too far and lose him, for every one had it straight from Mary Askinson, who is intimately acquainted with a close friend of Minnie's old school chum, that Minnie had been in love with Sam since they graduated from the high school together. It was all we could do from breaking in and interfering, especially when Sam went off his feed and began to throw out ugly talk about

n Homeburg when young Cyrus McCord went to Chicago to carve out his future so that he could come home and marry her. But Cyrus didn't carve o

d about him; and when Deacon White was making his great plunges in Wall Street, Homeburg looked at the financial page of the Chicago papers first and then read the baseball. We're as happy over their success as if they were our children-but it's always embarrassing for a little while when a Homeburg man who has made good comes back to visit in the old town. We're aching to rush up and wring his arm off, but we want to know how he feels about it first. One or two exp

th about a thousand dollars worth of dry goods and a pinch of brains behind it? If my turn ever comes to face a Gatling gun I hope to march right up to it like a little man-but lorgnettes? No! Any hostile army could lick Homeburg by aiming lorgnettes at it. I gave one look at the thing and fell over myself in heaps getting away. I wouldn't speak to Sim Bone fo

but we need encouragement. We wouldn't speak first for a farm. We wait for some calloused gabbler to break the ice. Gibb Ogle usually does it. Gibb would act as a reception committee for the Angel Gabriel without a quiver. He's always on t

and and yells: "Why, hello, Gibb, you fat old scoundrel, how's your sore foot?" Then we crowd around and fight for the next turn

zling over the financial situation long enough to give the glad hand to a Homeburg man during office hours. Of course I don't mean that any one from Homeburg can break in on him and pile his desk full of feet. You have to be a thirty-third degree Homeburger from his standpoint; that is, you or your father must have stolen apples with him-I

fterward. But he was going through on his special car, and old Number Eleven, which was hauling him, performed the most intelligent act of its career. The engine brok

f us came in to trade and watched him do it. It was pathetic. They stood there like strangers from different lands, Banks trying to unbutton his huge, thick ulster of dignity, and not succeeding, and Pash trying to say something that would interest Banks-along the line of high finance of course-state of the country, etc. They gave it up in a minute, and Banks went out. He found Pelty Amthorne and shook hands with him. Pelty is pretty loquacious a

own, even in our peaceful world. But when he saw Bank

-of-a-gun!" he said, with

said Banks, so

y ain't you come before? You're a nice friendl

grin began to edge its way across his face. "Hav

pant leg and pretty near pounded yourself to death with a ball bat," said Sim. "Can y

s now, using all four of them. "Say, I've got to see h

ks. "You seem to think some one's chasing you. You're g

yway. You had a garter snake in the bed last time I slept

name and was now shaking hands with Banks. "Why, the old fat snide, nobody wants to see h

remember more things than you ever heard of. Why, Sadie and I we

dden shriek of laughter. "Never kn

. "You confounded horse thief, I beli

asped Payley, "only took hi

ce that night. We've been married twenty-five years, and I guess I'll let you co

boys, I

varnished car down there?" demanded S

We'll take you to band practice to-night. Sim st

"But I'd give ten dollars to see you and Wimble Horn blat away

'll break up band practi

I

. "I won't have riff-raff

me down to the car while I send about forty tele

conduct and that of his old companions in crime set an example to our younger generation which didn't wear off for years.