f the Canaan Mining and Development
Company a gala day, a holiday, and I believe that you are all prepared
to agree with me that it was a good idea. All that I want to say to you
now for myself and for Mr. Carington, and for the eastern gentlemen
whose money Mr. Carington represents, is just this: A great opportunity
has opened up for us all down here. A new Missouri is about to be made.
All our dreams are coming true. The golden harvest of our wheat fields
has been found to be rooted deep in mines of wonderful richness. But
just because we have found something inside these hills of ours, don't
let's neglect the outside of the hills. We must cultivate and improve on
the outside, while we dig down deep on the inside. Life is going to give
us chances from now on that we have never had before. As a people we
must rise to these chances all along the line. We must come up all along
the line. We must get better schools, better houses, better barns,
better farming implements, better kitchen implements, better roads. Our
watchword down here in the Southwest must be to _come up_. Don't forget
it. We've got our chance now, now we must come up!"

Bruce sat down and the people, who had listened to him attentively, the
faces of the farm-women especially keen and responsive, broke into
another vast applause that set the leaves astir.

Somebody began to insist then that somebody else ought to make a speech
of thanks, appreciation, to the Steerings for the day, and for the
general satisfaction and prosperity that had come into Canaan with the
new regime of the Canaan Company's affairs. Everybody began to turn
toward Mr. Quin Beasley. Those nearest him nudged him. Very slowly Mr.
Beasley got to his feet, mounted the stump, fell off and mounted it
again.

"Frien's an'," Mr. Beasley's scared eye lit upon some children just
beneath him who were regarding him with awe and the ecstatic hope that
he would fall off again, and, encouraged by the awe, he levelled his
next words at them powerfully, "Fellow Citizens! Taint fer me to say
anythin' more ceppen only that ef I did say anythin', which I shan't, it
'ud jes be to say over whut Mist' Steerin' has said as bein' the whole
thing, an fer that reason I'll say nothin'."

It was a master stroke! Never in his life before had Beasley refrained
from saying anything because he had nothing to say. The Canaanites were
impressed. They said, "Good! Good!" For fear of some anticlimax Bruce at
once gav