Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/53



the crime of being Potts the wretched Colonel had now added malversation of a trust fund. But I crave surcease, while it may be mine, from the immediately troubling waters of Potts. Let me turn more broadly to our town and its good people for that needed recreation which they never fail to afford me.

"Arcady of the Little Country," we often say. On maps it is Little Arcady, county seat of Slocum County, an isle and haven in the dreary land sea that flattens away from it on every side,—north to the big woods, south to the swamp counties, and east and west, one might almost say, a thousand miles to the mountains. Our point is one from which to say either "back East" or "out West." It is neither, of itself, though it touches both.

We are so ancient that plenty of us remember the stone fireplace in the log-cabin, with its dusters for the hearth of buffalo tail and wild-turkey wing, with iron pot hung by a chain from the chimney hook, with pewter or wooden plates from which to eat with horn-handled knives and iron spoons. But yet are we so modern that we have fine new houses