Page:Micheaux - The Conquest, The Story of a Negro Pioneer (1913).djvu/233

 awhile. "Stick together! Stick together! We've got the best town in the best county, in the best state in the best country in the world. What more do you want?" He would fairly rave, with his old eyes stretched widely open, and his shaggy beard flowing in the breeze. He continued this until he bored the people and weakened the already weakening forces.

There were many good business men in Amro, among them young men of sterling qualities, college-bred, ambitious and with dreams of great success and of establishing themselves securely. Many of them had sweethearts in the east, and desired to make a showing and profit as well, and how were they to do this in a town in which even outsiders, though they might not admire the Nicholsons, were predicting failure for those who remained, and declaring they were foolish to stay. This young blood was getting hard to control, and to hold them something more had to be done than declaring Ernest Nicholson to be trying to wreck the town and break up their homes. Poor fools—I would think, as I listened to them, talking as though Ernest Nicholson had anything to do with the railroad missing the town. It was simply the mistaken location.

It had been an easy matter for the promoters, whose capital was mostly in the air, to locate Amro on the allotment of Oliver Amoureaux, because they could do so without paying anything, and did not have to pay fifty-five dollars an acre for deeded land as Nicholson had done. Being centrally located and with enough buildings to encourage