's journey
to New York, so that the Center of the name was often construed
facetiously by outlanders.

Now Newbern Center is modern, and grows callous. Only the other day a
wandering biplane circled the second nine of its new golf course, and of
the four players on the tenth green but one paid it the tribute of an
upward glance. Even this was a glance of resentment, for his partner at
that instant eyed the alignment for a three-foot putt and might be
distracted. The annoyed player flung up a hostile arm at the thing and
waved it from the course. Seemingly abashed, the machine slunk off into
a cloud bank.

Old Sharon Whipple, the player who putted, never knew that above him had
gone a thing he had very lately said could never be. Sharon has grown
modern with the town. Not so many years ago he scoffed at rumours of a
telephone. He called it a contraption, and said it would be against the
laws of God and common sense. Later he proscribed the horseless carriage
as an impracticable toy. Of flying he had affirmed that the fools who
tried it would deservedly break their necks, and he had gustily raged at
the waste of a hundred and seventy-five acres of good pasture land when
golf was talked.

Yet this very afternoon the inconsequent dotard had employed a telephone
to summon his car to transport him to the links, and had denied even a
glance of acknowledgment at the wonder floating above him. Much like
that is growing Newbern. There was gasping aplenty when Winona Penniman
abandoned the higher life and bought a flagrant pair of satin dancing
slippers, but now the town lets far more sensational doings go almost
unremarked.

The place tosses even with the modern fever of unrest. It has its
bourgeoisie, its proletariat, its radicals, but also a city-beautiful
association and a rather captious sanitary league. Lately a visiting
radical, on the occasion of a certain patriotic celebration, expressed a
conventional wish to spit upon the abundantly displayed flag. A knowing
friend was quick to dissuade him.

"Don't do it! Don't try it! Here, now, you got no freedom! Should you
spit only on their sidewalk, they fine the heart's blood out of you."

* * * * *

Midway between these periods of very early and very late Newbern there
was once a shining summer morning on which the Cowan twins, being then
nine years old, set out from the Penniman home to pick wild
blackberries along certain wooded lanes t