d heretofore merely trickled beneath the rickety wooden
road culvert. It watched in awed silence the slow recession of waters,
the appearance of unexpected little lakes and islands and slimy
streams in the shining black bottom of that swamp.

On the very day, too, that this work was installed, there came from
Vittoreo Matteo, in Boston, the Etruscan vase. Wallingford, opening it
in the privacy of his own room, was intensely relieved to find that
Blackie had bought one of entirely different shape and style of
decoration from those he had already shown, and he sent it immediately
to the house of Mrs. Hispin, where that week's meeting of the Women's
Culture Club was being held. He followed it with his own impressive
self to show them the difference between the high-grade Etruscan ware
and the inferior ware he had previously exhibited. He placed the two
pieces side by side for comparison. Though they had been made by the
same factory, the ladies of the Women's Culture Club one and all could
see the enormous difference in the exquisiteness of the under-glaze.
The Etruscan ware was infinitely superior, and just think! this
beautiful vase was made from Blakeville's own superior article of
black mud!

Up in Hen Moozer's General Merchandise Emporium and Post-Office
Wallingford arranged for a show window, and from behind its dusty
panes he had the eternal pyramid of fly-specked canned goods removed.
In its place he constructed a semi-circular amphitheater of pale blue
velvet, bought from Moozer's own stock, and in its center he placed
the priceless bit of Etruscan ware, the first splendid art object from
the to-be-famous Blakeville Etruscan studios!

In the meantime, Jonas Bubble had found willing subscribers to the
stock of the Bubble Bank, and already was installing an impregnable
vault in his vacant brick building at the intersection of Maple Avenue
and Blake Street. By this time every citizen had a new impulse of
civic pride, and vast commercial expansion was planned by every
business man in Blakeville. Even the women felt the contagion, and it
was one of the sorrows of Miss Forsythe's soul that her vacation
arrangements had already been made for the summer, and that she should
be compelled to go away even for a short time, leaving all this
inspiriting progress behind her. It would be just like Mrs. Moozer to
take advantage of the situation! Mrs. Moozer was vice-president of the
Women's Culture Club.

The Bubble County B