The Commoner stared carefully at the window display which included several copies of Before Adam, by Jack London.
Then he entered, and selected a dozen views of Altamont and the surrounding hills.
“He may come here to live,” said George Graves.
“Dr. Doak’s offered to give him a house and lot in Doak Park.”
“Why?” said Eugene.
“Because the advertising will be worth a lot to the town,” said George Graves.
A little before them, that undaunted daughter of desires, Miss Elizabeth Scragg, emerged from Woolworth’s Five and Ten Cent Store, and turned up toward the Square.
Smiling, she acknowledged the ponderous salute of Big Jeff White, the giant half-owner of the Whitstone hotel, whose fortunes had begun when he had refused to return to his old comrade, Dickson Reese, the embezzling cashier, ninety thousand dollars of entrusted loot.
Dog eat dog.
Thief catch thief.
It is not growing like a tree, in bulk doth make man better be.
His six-and-a-half-foot shadow flitted slowly before them.
He passed, in creaking number twelves, a massive smooth-jowled man with a great paunch girdled in a wide belt.
Across the street again, before the windows of the Van W.
Yeats Shoe Company, the Reverend J.
Brooks Gall, Amherst (‘61), and as loyal a Deke as ever breathed, but looking only sixty of his seventy-three years, paused in his brisk walk, and engaged in sprightly monologue, three of his fellow Boy Scouts — the Messrs. Lewis Monk, seventeen, Bruce Rogers, thirteen, and Malcolm Hodges, fourteen.
None knew as well as he the heart of a boy.
He, too, it seems, had once been one himself.
Thus, as one bright anecdote succeeded, or suggested, a half-dozen others, they smiled dutifully, with attentive respect, below the lifted barrier of his bristly white mustache, into the gleaming rhyme of his false teeth.
And, with rough but affectionate camaraderie, he would pause from time to time to say: “Old Male!” or “Old Bruce!” gripping firmly his listener’s arm, shaking him gently.
Pallidly, on restless feet, they smiled, plotting escape with slant-eyed stealth.
Mr. Buse, the Oriental rug merchant, came around the corner below them from Liberty Street.
His broad dark face was wreathed in Persian smiles.
I met a traveller from an antique land.
In the Bijou Cafe for Ladies and Gents, Mike, the counter man, leaned his hairy arms upon the marble slab, and bent his wrinkled inch of brow upon a week-old copy of Atlantis.
Fride Chicken To-day with Sweet Potatos.
Hail to thee, blithe spirit, bird thou never wert.
A solitary fly darted swiftly about the greasy cover of a glass humidor, under which a leathery quarter of mince pie lay weltering.
Spring had come.
Meanwhile, having completed twice their parade up and down the street from the Square to the post-office, the Misses Christine Ball, Viola Powell, Aline Rollins, and Dorothy Hazzard were accosted outside Wood’s Drug Store by Tom French, seventeen, Roy Duncan, nineteen, and Carl Jones, eighteen.
“Where do you think you’re going?” said Tom French, insolently.
Gayly, brightly, in unison, they answered:
“Hey — ee!”
“Hay’s seven dollars a ton,” said Roy Duncan, and immediately burst into a high cackle of laughter, in which all the others joined, merrily.
“You craz-ee!” said Viola Powell tenderly.
Tell me, ye merchants’ daughters, did ye see another creature fair and wise as she.
“Mr. Duncan,” said Tom French, turning his proud ominous face upon his best friend, “I want you to meet a friend of mine, Miss Rollins.”
“I think I’ve met this man somewhere before,” said Aline Rollins.
Another Splendor on his mouth alit.
“Yes,” said Roy Duncan,
“I go there often.”
His small tight freckled impish face creased again by his high cackle.
All I could never be.
They moved into the store, where drouthy neibors neibors meet, through the idling group of fountain gallants.
Mr. Henry Sorrell (It Can Be Done), and Mr. John T.
Howland (We Sell Lots and Lots of Lots), emerged, beyond Arthur N. Wright’s, jeweller, from the gloomy dusk of the Gruner Building.
Each looked into the sub-divisions of the other’s heart; their eyes kept the great Vision of the guarded mount as swiftly they turned into Church Street where Sorrell’s Hudson was parked.
White-vested, a trifle paunchy, with large broad feet, a shaven moon of red face, and abundant taffy-colored hair, the Reverend John Smallwood, pastor of the First Baptist Church, walked heavily up the street, greeting his parishioners warmly, and hoping to see his Pilot face to face.
Instead, however, he encountered the Honorable William Jennings Bryan, who was coming slowly out of the bookstore.
The two close friends greeted each other affectionately, and, with a firm friendly laying on of hands, gave each to each the Christian aid of a benevolent exorcism.