SHE to be content, which was a in terms. She house all April. She a for Hugh. She was at Red Cross work. She was when Vida that though America as much as ever, we must Germany and out every man, it was now proven that there was no soldier in the German army who was not and off babies' hands.
Carol was nurse when Mrs. Champ Perry died of pneumonia.
In her were the eleven people left out of the Grand Army and the Territorial Pioneers, old men and women, very old and weak, who a ago had been boys and girls of the frontier, through the rank of this prairie. They a up of men and high-school boys, who along without or ranks or leader, trying to play Chopin's Funeral March—a group of neighbors with eyes, through the under a of music.
Champ was broken. His was worse. The rooms over the store were silent. He not do his work as at the elevator. Farmers in with sled-loads of that Champ not read the scale, that he always to be some one in the of the bins. He was through alleys, talking to himself, trying to avoid observation, at last to the cemetery. Once Carol him and the coarse, tobacco-stained, old man on the of the grave, his thick arms spread out across the as if to protect her from the cold, her he had up every night for sixty years, who was alone there now, for.
The company, Ezra Stowbody president, let him go. The company, Ezra to Carol, had no for pensions.
She to have him to the postmastership, which, since all the work was done by assistants, was the one in town, the one for political purity. But it proved that Mr. Bert Tybee, the bartender, the postmastership.
At her Lyman Cass gave Champ a warm as night watchman. Small boys played a good many on Champ when he asleep at the mill.
II
She had in the return of Major Raymond Wutherspoon. He was well, but still weak from having been gassed; he had been and he came home as the of the veterans. It was that he Vida by unannounced, that Vida when she saw him, and for a night and day would not him with the town. When Carol saw them Vida was about Raymie, and so from him that she not her hand under his. Without why Carol was by this intensity. And Raymie—surely this was not Raymie, but a of his, this man with the tight blouse, the emblems, the in boots. His different, his more tight. He was not Raymie; he was Major Wutherspoon; and Kennicott and Carol were when he that Paris wasn't as as Minneapolis, that all of the American soldiers had been by their when on leave. Kennicott was as he the Germans had good aeroplanes, and what a was, and a cootie, and Going West.
In a week Major Wutherspoon was full manager of the Bon Ton. Harry Haydock was going to himself to the half-dozen branch stores which he was at hamlets. Harry would be the town's rich man in the generation, and Major Wutherspoon would with him, and Vida was jubilant, though she was at having to give up most of her Red Cross work. Ray still needed nursing, she explained.
When Carol saw him with his off, in a pepper-and salt and a new hat, she was disappointed. He was not Major Wutherspoon; he was Raymie.
For a month small boys him the street, and called him Major, but that was presently to Maje, and the small boys did not look up from their marbles as he by.
III
The town was booming, as a result of the price of wheat.
The money did not in the pockets of the farmers; the to take of all that. Iowa farmers were selling their land at four hundred an and into Minnesota. But or or mortgaged, the themselves to the feast—millers, real-estate men, lawyers, merchants, and Dr. Will Kennicott. They land at a hundred and fifty, it next day at a hundred and seventy, and again. In three months Kennicott seven thousand dollars, which was more than four times as much as paid him for the sick.
In early a “campaign of boosting.” The Commercial Club that Gopher Prairie was not only a wheat-center but also the perfect site for factories, cottages, and institutions. In of the was Mr. James Blausser, who had come to town to in land. Mr. Blausser was as a Hustler. He liked to be called Honest Jim. He was a bulky, gauche, noisy, man, with narrow eyes, a complexion, large red hands, and clothes. He was to all women. He was the man in town who had not been to Carol's aloofness. He put his arm about her while he to Kennicott, “Nice wifey, I'll say, doc,” and when she answered, not warmly, “Thank you very much for the imprimatur,” he on her neck, and did not know that he had been insulted.
He was a layer-on of hands. He came to the house without trying to her. He touched her arm, let his her side. She the man, and she was of him. She if he had of Erik, and was taking advantage. She spoke of him at home and in public places, but Kennicott and the other powers insisted, “Maybe he is of a roughneck, but you got to hand it to him; he's got more git-up-and-git than any that this burg. And he's cute, too. Hear what he said to old Ezra? Chucked him in the and said, 'Say, boy, what do you want to go to Denver for? Wait 'll I time and I'll move the here. Any will be to death to here once we the White Way in!'”
The town Mr. Blausser as as Carol him. He was the guest of at the Commercial Club Banquet at the Minniemashie House, an occasion for printed in gold (but proof-read), for free cigars, soft of Lake Superior as of sole, cigar-ashes the of coffee cups, and to Pep, Punch, Go, Vigor, Enterprise, Red Blood, He-Men, Fair Women, God's Country, James J. Hill, the Blue Sky, the Green Fields, the Bountiful Harvest, Increasing Population, Fair Return on Investments, Alien Agitators Who Threaten the Security of Our Institutions, the Hearthstone the Foundation of the State, Senator Knute Nelson, One Hundred Per Cent. Americanism, and Pointing with Pride.
Harry Haydock, as chairman, Honest Jim Blausser. “And I am proud to say, my citizens, that in his here Mr. Blausser has my warm personal friend as well as my booster, and I you all to very to the of a man who how to achieve.”
Mr. Blausser up like an elephant with a camel's neck—red faced, red eyed, fisted, belching—a leader, to be a but to the more of real-estate. He on his warm personal friends and boosters, and boomed:
“I was in the of our little city, the other day. I met the of that God made—meaner than the or the Texas lallapaluza! (Laughter.) And do you know what the was? He was a knocker! (Laughter and applause.)
“I want to tell you good people, and it's just as sure as God little apples, the thing that our American from the and tin-horns in other is our Punch. You take a genuwine, honest-to-God Americanibus and there ain't anything he's to tackle. Snap and speed are his middle name! He'll put her across if he has to from to breakfast, and me, I'm good and sorry for the that's so unlucky as to in his way, that is going to wonder where he was at when Old Mr. Cyclone town! (Laughter.)
“Now, frien's, there's some so yellow and small and so in the that they go to work and that those of us that have the big are off our trolleys. They say we can't make Gopher Prairie, God her! just as big as Minneapolis or St. Paul or Duluth. But tell you right here and now that there ain't a town under the of that's got a to take a jump and go right up into the two-hundred-thousand class than little old G. P.! And if there's that's got such cold that he's to after Jim Blausser on the Big Going Up, then we don't want him here! Way I it, you are just so that you ain't going to for any guy and his own town, no how much of a Aleck he is—and just on the I want to add that this Farmers' Nonpartisan League and the whole of are right in the same category, or, as the says, in the same scategory, meaning This Way Out, Exit, Beat It While the Going's Good, This Means You, for all of and the of property!
“Fellow citizens, there's a of folks, right here in this state, and of all the union, that up on their and that the East and Europe put it all over the Northwestland. Now let me that right here and now. 'Ah-ha,' says they, 'so Jim Blausser is that Gopher Prairie is as good a place to live in as London and Rome and—and all the of the Big Burgs, is he? How the fish know?' says they. Well I'll tell you how I know! I've 'em! I've done Europe from to nuts! They can't that on Jim Blausser and away with it! And let me tell you that the only live thing in Europe is our boys that are there now! London—I three days, sixteen hours a day, London the once-over, and let me tell you that it's nothing but a of and out-of-date that no live American would for one minute. You may not it, but there ain't one first-class in the whole works. And the same thing goes for that of and Down East, and next time you some from Yahooville-on-the-Hudson the and and trying to your goat, you tell him that no two-fisted Westerner would have New York for a gift!
“Now the point of this is: I'm not only that Gopher Prairie is going to be Minnesota's pride, the in the of the North Star State, but also and that it is right now, and still more shall be, as good a place to live in, and love in, and up the Little Ones in, and it's got as much and culture, as any on the whole bloomin' of God's Green Footstool, and that goes, me, that goes!”
Half an hour later Chairman Haydock moved a vote of thanks to Mr. Blausser.
The boosters' was on.
The town that and modern of which is as “publicity.” The was reorganized, and provided by the Commercial Club with of and gold. The baseball-team a semi-professional from Des Moines, and a of with every town for fifty miles about. The citizens it as “rooters,” in a special car, with “Watch Gopher Prairie Grow,” and with the playing “Smile, Smile, Smile.” Whether the team or the Dauntless shrieked, “Boost, Boys, and Boost Together—Put Gopher Prairie on the Map—Brilliant Record of Our Matchless Team.”
Then, of glories, the town put in a White Way. White Ways were in fashion in the Middlewest. They were of with of high-powered electric lights along two or three on Main Street. The Dauntless confessed: “White Way Is Installed—Town Lit Up Like Broadway—Speech by Hon. James Blausser—Come On You Twin Cities—Our Hat Is In the Ring.”
The Commercial Club a prepared by a great and person from a Minneapolis agency, a red-headed man who cigarettes in a long holder. Carol read the with a wonder. She learned that Plover and Minniemashie Lakes were world-famed for their and and not to be in the entire country; that the of Gopher Prairie were models of dignity, comfort, and culture, with and gardens and wide; that the Gopher Prairie and public library, in its and building, were the state; that the Gopher Prairie the best in the country; that the farm lands were renowned, where'er men ate and butter, for their No. 1 Hard Wheat and Holstein-Friesian cattle; and that the stores in Gopher Prairie with Minneapolis and Chicago in their of and and the ever-courteous attention of the clerks. She learned, in brief, that this was the one Logical Location for and houses.
“THERE'S where I want to go; to that model town Gopher Prairie,” said Carol.
Kennicott was when the Commercial Club did one small which planned to make automobile-wheels, but when Carol saw the promoter she not that his much mattered—and a year after, when he failed, she not be very sorrowful.
Retired farmers were moving into town. The price of had a third. But Carol no more pictures food voices minds. She could, she asserted, a but town; the town and she not endure. She nurse Champ Perry, and warm to the of Sam Clark, but she not Honest Jim Blausser. Kennicott had her, in days, to the town to beauty. If it was now as as Mr. Blausser and the Dauntless said, then her work was over, and she go.
