iled street-car waiting at
the end of its line, its horse dejected with the ennui of its career,
the driver dozing on the step.

Shelby decided to review the town from this seedy chariot; but the
driver, surly with sleep, opened one eye and one corner of his mouth
just enough to inform him that the next "run" was not due for fifteen
minutes.

"I'll change that," said Shelby. "I'll give 'em a trolley, and open cars
in summer, too."

He dragged his discouraged feet back to the hotel and asked when dinner
would be served.

"Supper's been ready sence six," said the clerk, whose agile toothpick
proclaimed that he himself had banqueted.

Shelby went into the dining-room. A haughty head waitress, zealously
chewing gum, ignored him for a time, then piloted him to a table where
he found a party of doleful drummers sparring in repartee with a damsel
of fearful and wonderful coiffure.

She detached herself reluctantly and eventually brought Shelby a supper
contained in a myriad of tiny barges with which she surrounded his plate
in a far-reaching flotilla.

When he complained that his steak was mostly gristle, and that he did
not want his pie yet, Hebe answered:

"Don't get flip! Think you're at the Worldoff?"

Poor Shelby's nerves were so rocked that he condescended to complain to
the clerk. For answer he got this:

"Mamie's all right. If you don't like our ways, better build a hotel of
your own."

"I guess I will," said Shelby.

He went to his room to read. The gas was no more than darkness made
visible. He vowed to change that, too.

He would telephone to the theater. The telephone-girl was forever in
answering, and then she was impudent. Besides, the theater was closed.
Shelby learned that there was "a movin'-pitcher show going"! He went,
and it moved him to the door.

The sidewalks were full of doleful loafers and loaferesses. Men placed
their chairs in the street and smoked heinous tobacco. Girls and women
dawdled and jostled to and from the ice-cream-soda fountains.

The streets that night were not lighted at all, for the moon was abroad,
and the board of aldermen believed in letting God do all He could for
the town. In fact, He did nearly all that the town could show of charm.
The trees were majestic, the grass was lavishly spread, the sky was
divinely blue by day and angelically bestarred at night.

Shelby compared his boyhood impressions with the feelings governing his
mind now that it was adult and