She nods, and we let it go at that.
That fence ruined the street, as far as our end of it was concerned. Them that lived north of it could look on up the lake for quite a ways, but for more than a quarter of a mile down toward the park there couldn't nobody see down that part of the street at all. The papers got to talking about it, and some complaints was printed too. Old Man Wright he only sort of laughed. The papers made fun of the Wisners for building that fence—sort of treating the whole thing like a joke.
About now the campaign for alderman got busier. Old Man Wright printed a full page in all the papers, with a picture of hisself, and saying that J. W. Wright was running for alderman in that ward. Right opposite his full-page ad was about six or eight inches, with a smaller picture of Old Man Wisner with it; and he said that Mr. David Abraham Wisner begged to submit his name as a candidate for the sufferedges for alderman in that ward. I didn't know what sufferedges was at first, but I knew what my boss was out after—it was votes, and he was liable to get 'em.
From that time on the boss was busier than he had been before. He got better acquainted over on the west side of our ward. Sometimes he wouldn't get back till midnight, but he always come home under his own steam. In his office I saw all sorts of people. He seemed to take to this alderman business natural.
Anyways he was a hard man to buck in any kind of a game. He had his own idea all the time maybe about that fence in Millionaire Row. One day he taken a little pasear down the lake front toward the head of the park, where there was some vacant land below us. He was sizing things up. Two or three weeks after he told me he'd bought that tract—the whole works, clear down to the end of the park. I don't know what he paid for it, but it must have been a lot of money.
"You see," says he, "all them people up there north of us on the row they ain't got only a little bit of land for their houses. Me, I'm going to have a place with half a mile or so of ground to it. Bonnie Bell has got to have a place to herself for to raise crocuses and other flowers," says he, "and to cultivate her Boston dog."
It was kind of hard times right then and a good many men was out of work. Old Man Wright put a lot of 'em to work on his new Bonnie Bell Addition, as he called it. He dug it up and smoothed it down and laid it out, and planted it with trees and sodded it. And then, down at the far end of it, he just puts up a high wall like the Wisners', but 'way off from it. Then we dug down along the Wisner wall.
Folks used to go along and wonder what it was done for and who done it. And later on some folks farther up the drive allowed it was some kind of a new Italian garden and some of them begun to put up them walls too. It got right fashionable. The whole looks of that part of town was changed. But, while they had little bits of yards you couldn't swing a cat in, we had land enough to start a hay ranch if we had of wanted to.
"I can afford it," says Old Man Wright.
And by the time he had the improvements started the real-estate men come and pestered him to take at least three times as much money as he give for it.