In Sycamore Ridge every one knows Watts McHurdie, and every one takes pride in the fact that far and wide the Ridge is known as Watts McHurdie's town, and this too in spite of the fact that from Sycamore Ridge Bob Hendricks gained his national reputation as a reformer and the further fact that when the Barclays went to New York or Chicago or to California for the winter in their private car, they always registered from Sycamore Ridge at the great hotels.

One would think that the town would be known more as Hendricks' town or Barclay's town; but no--nothing of the kind has happened, and when the rich and the great go forth from the Ridge, people say: "Oh, yes, Sycamore Ridge--that's Watts McHurdie's town, who wrote--" but people from the Ridge let the inquirers get no farther; they say: "Exactly--it's Watts McHurdie's town--and you ought to see him ride in the open hack with the proprietor of a circus when it comes to the Ridge and all the bands and the calliope are playing Watts' song.

The way the people cheer shows that it is really Watts McHurdie's town." So when Colonel Martin Culpepper wrote the "Biography of Watts McHurdie" which was published together with McHurdie's "Complete Poetical and Philosophical Works," there was naturally much discussion, and the town was more or less divided as to what part of the book was the best.

But the old settlers,--those who, during the drouth of '60, ate mince pies with pumpkins as the fruit and rabbit meat as the filling and New Orleans black-strap as the sweetening, the old settlers who knew Watts before he became famous,--they like best of all the chapters in the colonel's Biography the one entitled "At Hymen's Altar." And here is a curious thing about it: in that chapter there is really less of Watts and considerably more of Colonel Martin Culpepper than in any other chapter.
But the newcomers, those who came in the prosperous days of the 70's or 80's, never could understand the partiality of the old settlers for the "Hymen's Altar" chapter.

Lycurgus Mason also always took the view that the "Hymen" chapter was drivel.
"Now, John, be sensible--" Lycurgus insisted one night in 1903 when the two were eating supper in Barclay's private car on a side-track in Arizona; "don't be like my wife--she always drools over that chapter, too.