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

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,

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

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

y old - prob'ly too old to b

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

e your work?" a

om things - the steel stacks, and the everlastin

get sick of

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

still, 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,

all

thinking of S

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

u 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

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

y, 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

ext 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

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

, 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

e 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 Car

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

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

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 s

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

orking 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

answered all her doubts with "S