Page:The Country Boy.djvu/50

42 old pioneers that came mostly in 1851, and most of them came from Ohio and Illinois.

No city, no matter what size, could have the glare and good times that the people of Silverton enjoyed. But the main population were highly educated people, and very prosperous, as they are to this day. The population still varies, owing to what’s coming off in town.

They had formed a brass band, but it hadn’t done very well. They had home talent shows and debating societies, and several lodges and a few saloons, but, above all, Silverton had among its population lots of great characters; men of great learning and wide experience, who spent most of their time playing marbles, and month after month I kept from hard work under the pretext that I was studying the character of the people of a town of three hundred.

My father was, and is now at eighty-three, a man of the highest form of education, a philosopher, a musician, a teacher, and above everything, a man. Considering that we had sacrificed country life for the city, he wanted to take advantage of the few advantages the city afforded that the farm didn’t; so I started