Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/215

Rh genuine enthusiasm for the place. His habit of mind had been formed in what was known as a live, a smart community, where men were used to big things dong promptly and on a big scale. He found Arguello half asleep, accustomed to doing the simplest public affairs—if they were done at all—only after long discussions and hesitations. Things Boyd had always taken as much for granted as shoes or a hat, Arguello either lacked, or possessed inadequately, or was strongly divided in opinion as to their advisibility. To the Easterner it was nothing short of a disgrace that Main Street and its principal laterals were unpaved; that the residence part of the town was sparely lighted; that the rattletrap, one-mule car was permitted to represent city transportation; that property owners were not forced to substitute something substantial in the way of sidewalks for the beaten earth that in wet weather became slippery mud. His order-loving mind was scandalized over various easy-going tacit permissions. It was dangerous to turn saddle horses loose on the streets to find their way to the stables by themselves; it was perilous to leave building material unprotected by lights: it was unsanitary and unsightly to drop rubbish over the edge of the sidewalks into the streets; it was annoying and unnecessary to pile the sidewalks half full of merchandise and leave them so; it was unwholesome to abandon Chinatown to its unsavoury filth. And what could be said of a town that permitted its firemen to haul sand with its fire horses two miles away from the fire engine! Boyd saw all these things, and many many others typical of the easy-going time and place, through the eyes of the Eastern visitor; and, as he was by now genuinely a citizen in spirit, he suffered a real agony of mortification as to what that Eastern visitor must think of it all.

His first attempts to interest people met with little encouragement. The inert dead indifference of the opposition astounded and made him indignant. A small proportion of those he talked to agreed with him that his ideas were sound and that it would be a good thing if they could be carried out; another small proportion, with the narrow vision of the untravelled, interposed the panicky but effective opposition of men who, unless they can plainly discern the dollar spent to-day returning not later than