le of their
quality, but "Snarleyow" came to him at an age when there was nothing
in the world to equal it.

Meanwhile the whole face of nature was changing, and the boy was
necessarily keeping up with the procession of new things. Broad
meadows were where even he, a mere boy still, had seen dense woodland;
there were highways, and it was far from the farmhouse door to the
forests edge. The fauna had diminished. The bear and wolverine had
gone forever. The fox rarely barked at night; the deer and wild turkey
were far less plentiful, though the ruffed grouse still drummed in the
copses, and the quail whistled from the fences. Different, even, were
the hunters in their methods. The boy, whose single-barreled shot-gun
had known no law, now carried a better piece, and scorned to slay a
sitting bird. Both he and Alf became great wing shots, and clever
gentlemen sportsmen from the city who sometimes came to hunt with them
could not hope to own so good a bag at the day's end. Wise as to dogs
and horses were they, too, and keen riders at country races. And
ridges of good muscles stiffened now their loins, and their chests were
deepening, and at "raisings," when the men and boys of the region
wrestled after their work was done, the two were not uncounted. For
them the country school had accomplished its mission. The world's
geography was theirs. Grammar they had memorized, but hardly
comprehended. As for mathematics, they were on the verge of algebra.
Then came the force of laws of politics and trade, a shifting of
things, and Grant strode out of nature to learn the artificial. His
family was removed to town.

Western, or rather Northwestern, town life, when the town has less than
ten thousand people, varies little with the locality. There is the
same vigor everywhere, because conditions are so similar. It is odd,
too, the close resemblance all through the great lake region in the
local geography of the towns. Small streams run into larger ones, and
these in turn enter the inland seas, or the straits, called rivers,
which connect them. Where the small rivers enter the larger ones, or
where the larger enter the straits or lakes, men made the towns. These
were the water cross-roads, the intersections of nature's highways, and
so it comes that to so many of these towns there is the great blue
water front intersected at its middle by a river. There is a bridge in
the town's main street, and the smell of water i