FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   283   284   285   286   287   288   289   290   291   292   293   294   295   296   297   298   299   300   301   302   303   304   305   306   307  
308   309   310   311   312   313   314   315   316   317   318   319   320   321   322   323   324   325   326   327   328   329   330   331   332   >>   >|  
atic; but when he went, they thought he was an escaped archangel.' Burlington, home of the sparkling Burdette, is another hill city; and also a beautiful one; unquestionably so; a fine and flourishing city, with a population of twenty-five thousand, and belted with busy factories of nearly every imaginable description. It was a very sober city, too--for the moment--for a most sobering bill was pending; a bill to forbid the manufacture, exportation, importation, purchase, sale, borrowing, lending, stealing, drinking, smelling, or possession, by conquest, inheritance, intent, accident, or otherwise, in the State of Iowa, of each and every deleterious beverage known to the human race, except water. This measure was approved by all the rational people in the State; but not by the bench of Judges. Burlington has the progressive modern city's full equipment of devices for right and intelligent government; including a paid fire department, a thing which the great city of New Orleans is without, but still employs that relic of antiquity, the independent system. In Burlington, as in all these Upper-River towns, one breathes a go-ahead atmosphere which tastes good in the nostrils. An opera-house has lately been built there which is in strong contrast with the shabby dens which usually do duty as theaters in cities of Burlington's size. We had not time to go ashore in Muscatine, but had a daylight view of it from the boat. I lived there awhile, many years ago, but the place, now, had a rather unfamiliar look; so I suppose it has clear outgrown the town which I used to know. In fact, I know it has; for I remember it as a small place--which it isn't now. But I remember it best for a lunatic who caught me out in the fields, one Sunday, and extracted a butcher-knife from his boot and proposed to carve me up with it, unless I acknowledged him to be the only son of the Devil. I tried to compromise on an acknowledgment that he was the only member of the family I had met; but that did not satisfy him; he wouldn't have any half-measures; I must say he was the sole and only son of the Devil--he whetted his knife on his boot. It did not seem worth while to make trouble about a little thing like that; so I swung round to his view of the matter and saved my skin whole. Shortly afterward, he went to visit his father; and as he has not turned up since, I trust he is there yet. And I remember Muscatine--still more pleasantly--for its summ
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   283   284   285   286   287   288   289   290   291   292   293   294   295   296   297   298   299   300   301   302   303   304   305   306   307  
308   309   310   311   312   313   314   315   316   317   318   319   320   321   322   323   324   325   326   327   328   329   330   331   332   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Burlington

 

remember

 

Muscatine

 

lunatic

 

theaters

 
cities
 

outgrown

 

pleasantly

 
awhile
 

daylight


suppose
 
unfamiliar
 

ashore

 

extracted

 
Shortly
 

whetted

 

afterward

 

measures

 

matter

 
trouble

wouldn

 

turned

 
butcher
 

proposed

 

Sunday

 

caught

 
fields
 

acknowledged

 
father
 
member

family

 

satisfy

 
acknowledgment
 

compromise

 

exportation

 

manufacture

 

importation

 

purchase

 

forbid

 
pending

moment

 

sobering

 

borrowing

 

lending

 

accident

 
intent
 

inheritance

 

conquest

 

stealing

 
drinking