ay in order that a pretentious-looking structure, the
new home of the Acre Hill Country Club, might be erected. Lovers sighed
when certain noble old oaks fraught with sentimental associations fell
before the un-sentimental axes of the Improvement Company; and
numberless young Waltons muttered imprecations upon the corporation that
filled in with stone and ashes the dear old pond that once gave forth
fish in great abundance, and through earthen pipes diverted the running
brook, that hitherto had kept it full, into a brand-new sewer.

These lovers of nature could not understand the great need of our
constantly growing population for uncomfortable houses in inconvenient
suburbs, and in their failure to comprehend they became cavilers. But
others--those who admire the genius which enables a man to make
unproductive land productive, who hail as benefactor one who supplants a
profitless oak of a thousand years' standing with a thriving
butcher-shop--these people understood what was being done for Dumfries
Corners, but wondered how the venture was to be made profitable. There
were already more vacant houses in Dumfries Corners than could be
rented, more butcher-shops than could be supported, more clubs than
could be run without a deficit. But the Acre Hill Land Improvement
Company went on, and within three years paradise had become earth, and
the mild-mannered and exceedingly amiable gentleman who had replaced the
homes of the birds with some fifteen or twenty houses for small
families could look about him and see greater results than ever greeted
the eyes of Romulus in the days of the great Rome Land Improvement
Company.

Most wonderful of all, he was still solvent! But a city is not a city,
nor, in its own degree, a suburb a suburb, without inhabitants; and
while to a mind like that back of the Acre Hill Land Improvement Company
it is seemingly a moderately easy task to lay out a suburb in so far as
its exterior appointments are concerned, the rub comes in the getting of
citizens. A Standard Oil magnate can build a city if he is willing to
spend the money, but all the powers of heaven and earth combined cannot
manufacture offhand a citizenship. In an emergency of this nature most
land improvement companies would have issued pretty little pamphlets,
gotten up in exquisite taste, full of beautiful pictures and bubbling
over with enthusiastic text, all based upon possibilities rather than
upon realities. But the Acre Hill Land