rhood. He was ever a
friend to all men, town or country.

It has always been something of a mystery to me, when I think of it, how
I happened for so long to miss knowing more about old Captain Doane, and
MacGregor, that roseate Scotchman. It is easier to understand why I
never knew Anthy, for she was much away from Hempfield in the years just
after I came here; and as for Norton Carr and Ed Smith, they did not
come until some time afterward.

I shall later celebrate Nort's arrival in Hempfield--and may petition
the selectmen to set up a monument upon the spot of this precious soil
where he first set a shaky foot.

I lived before I knew Anthy and Nort and MacGregor and the old Captain,
but sometimes I wonder how I lived. When we let new friends into our
lives we become permanently enlarged, and marvel that we could ever have
lived in a smaller world.

So I came to know Hempfield, and all those stories--humorous, tragic,
exciting, bitter, sorrowful--which thrive so lustily in every small
town. As we treasure finally those books which are not, after all,
concerned with clapping finite conclusions to infinite events, but are
content to be beautiful as they go (as truth is beautiful), so I love
the living stories of Hempfield, nor care deeply whether they are at
Chapter I, or in the midst of the climax, or whether they are tapering
toward a Gothic-lettered "Finis." Only I have never once come across any
Hempfield story that can be said to have reached a final page. Every
Hempfield story I know has been like a stone dropped in the puddle of
life, with ripples that grow ever wider with the years. And I esteem it
the best thing in my life that I have had a part in some of those
stories: that a few people, perhaps, are different, as I am different,
because I passed that way.

How well I remember the evening when my eye was first caught by the
twinkle of that luminary, the Hempfield _Star_, with which afterward I
was to become so intimately acquainted. It came to me like a fresh
breeze on a sultry day, or a new man in the town road. It was a
paragraph in the editorial page, headed with a single word printed in
robust black type:

FUDGE

At that time I had been "taking in" the _Star_ (as they say here) for
only a few weeks, and had seen little in it that made it appear
different from any other weekly newspaper. I am ashamed to say that I
had entertained a good-humoured tolerance, mingled with contempt, for
country newspa