it was for business.

The town was built on a flat space, and the country was flat on all
sides of it. It was on no river, brook, or creek. It was as unbeautiful
in location as it was in architecture. It was just a homely, common,
busy little Iowa village, and even so late in the evening it was as hot
as Sahara; but Eliph' Hewlitt knew it at once for a good town, for
the street was knee deep in dust, which meant much trade, and the four
buildings at the corners of Main and Cross Streets were of brick, which
meant profitable business. There were a couple of other brick buildings
on Main Street, and one or two with "tin" fronts, and of the other
business places only one or two were so ramshackle that they looked
as if their firmer neighbors were holding them up, letting the weaker
structures lean against them as a strong man might support an invalid.

Eliph' Hewlitt liked the town; it was just his idea of what a town
should be, not much as to style, but business-like. There were two full
blocks of Main Street devoted to business, and nearly half a block of
Cross Street was given over to the same purpose, and the dwellings were
well scattered over the surrounding level tract. Three or four of the
dwellings "out Main Street" had conspicuous lawns that had felt the
blades of a lawn mower, but most of the yards were merely grass, with
flower beds filled with the more hardy kinds of flowers, such as would
grow tall and show over the top of the surrounding grass. The plank
walks, which on Main and Cross Streets were made of boards laid
crossways, tapered down into narrow walks with the boards--two of
them--laid lengthways very soon after the stores were passed, and a
little farther out became dirt paths along the fences, and beyond that
pedestrians were supposed to walk on the road. But most of the houses
were painted, either freshly, or at least not anciently.

The corner of Main and Cross Streets, the business center of Kilo, was
like the business centers of other small country towns. A long hitching
rail extended at the side of the street before the buildings on each
corner, and the dirt beneath was worn away by the scraping of the feet
of the many horses that had been tied to the rails. Just below the
corner, on Cross Street, were other holes worn by tossing horseshoes at
pegs, which, if America was composed of small towns only, would be our
national game.

It was a good little town, and Eliph' Hewlitt was pleased.

O