[The Boss of Little Arcady by Harry Leon Wilson]@TWC D-Link bookThe Boss of Little Arcady CHAPTER XXX 3/9
Of old it had been enough to say "down toward the depot," "out by the McCormick place," "next to the Presbyterian church," "up around the schoolhouse," or "down by the lumber yard." But now it was plain that one had to know First, Second, and Third streets, Washington, Adams, and Jefferson streets. Socially as well, the town had changed.
Not only is the native stock more travelled, speaking--entirely without an air--of trips to the Yellowstone, to Europe, Chicago, or Santa Barbara, but a new element has invaded the little country.
It goes in the fall, but it comes again each summer, drawn by the green beauty of the spot, and it has left its impress. The revisiting wanderer observed, as in a dream, an immaculate coupe with a couple of men on the box who behaved quite as if they were about to enter the park in the full glare of Fifty-ninth Street and Fifth Avenue, though they were but on a street of the little country among farm wagons.
The outfit was ascertained to belong to a summer resident who was said, by common report, to "have wine right on the table at every meal." No one born out of Little Arcady can appraise the revolutionary character of this circumstance at anything like its true value. Further, in the line of vehicular sensationalism, a modish wicker-bodied phaeton and a minute pony-cart were seen on a pleasant afternoon to issue from a driveway far up a street that now has a name, but which used to be adequately identified by saying "up toward the Fair Grounds." The phaeton was occupied by two ladies, one rather old, to whom a couple of half-grown children in the pony-cart kissed their hands and shouted. They were not permitted to follow the phaeton, however, as they seemed to have wished.
Its shock-headed pony, driven by an aged negro who scolded both children with a worn and practised garrulity, was turned in another direction.
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