Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/388



A from Little Arcady in early days returned to its placid shades after many years, drawn thither by a little quick-born yearning to walk the old streets again. But he found such strangeness in these that his memory was put to prodigious feats of reconstruction ere it could make them seemly as of yore.

To the west, away from the river, the town has groped beyond a prairie frontier that had once been sacred to boyish games and the family cow. Now, so thickly was it built with neat white houses, that only with strenuous clairvoyance could famous old localities be identified: the ball-ground; the marshy stretch that made skating in winter, or, in spring, a fascinating place to catch cold by wading; the grassy common where "shinny" was played by day and "Yellow Horn" by night; the enchanted spot where the circus built airy castles of canvas, and where, on the day after, one might plant one's feet squarely in the magic ring, on the veritable spot, perchance, where the clown had superhumanly ridden the difficult trick-mule after local volunteers had failed so entertainingly.