These were the water cross-roads, the intersections of nature's highways, and so it comes that to so many of these towns there is the great blue water front intersected at its middle by a river.

There is a bridge in the town's main street, and the smell of water is ever in the air.
Boys learn to swim like otters and skate like Hollanders, and their sisters emulate them in the skating, though not so much in the swimming as they should.

There is a life full of great swing.

The touch between the town and country is exceedingly close, and the country family which comes to the community blends swiftly with the current.
So with the family of Grant Harlson and so with him personally.

A year made him collared and cravatted, short-cropped of hair, mighty in high-school frays, and with a new ambition stirring him, of a quality to compare with that of one Lucifer of unbounded reputation and doubtful biography.