The result was astonishing. The cottonwoods grew apace and a swift town grew with them—swift in every sense of the word. It took good money to buy good lots in Arcadia. People with money must be fed, served and amused by people wanting money. In three years the trees cast a pleasant shade and the company cast a balance, with gratifying results. They discounted the unearned increment for a generation to come.
It was a beneficent scheme, selling ozone and novelty, sunshine and delight. The buyers got far more than the worth of their money, the company got their money—and every one was happy. Health and good spirits are a bargain at any price. There were sandstorms and hot days; but sand promotes digestion and digestion promotes cheerfulness. Heat merely enhanced the luxury of shaded hammocks. As an adventurer thawed out, he sent for seven others worse than himself. Arcadia became the metropolis of the county and, by special election, the county-seat. Courthouse, college and jail followed in quick succession.
For the company, Arcadia life was one grand, sweet song, with, thus far, but a single discord. As has been said, Arcadia was laid out on the plain. There was higher ground on three sides—Rainbow Mountain to the east, the deltas of La Luz Creek and the Alamo to the north and south. New Mexico was dry, as a rule. After the second exception, when enthusiastic citizens went about on stilts to forward a project for changing the town’s name to Venice, the company acknowledged its error handsomely. When dry land prevailed once more above the face of the waters, it built a mighty moat by way of the amende honorable—a moat with its one embankment on the inner side of the five-mile horseshoe about the town. This, with its attendant bridges, gave to Arcadia an aspect singularly medieval. It also furnished a convenient line of social demarcation. Chauffeurs, college professors, lawyers, gamblers, county officers, together with a few tradesmen and railroad officials, abode within “the Isle of Arcady,” on more or less even terms with the Arcadians proper; millmen, railroaders, lumberjacks, and the underworld generally, dwelt without the pale.
The company rubbed its lamp again—and behold! an armory, a hospital and a library! It contributed liberally to churches and campaign funds; it exercised a general supervision over morals and manners. For example, in the deed to every lot sold was an ironclad, fire-tested, automatic and highly constitutional forfeiture clause, to the effect that sale or storage on the premises of any malt, vinous or spirituous liquors should immediately cause the title to revert to the company. The company’s own vicarious saloon, on Lot Number One, was a sumptuous and magnificent affair. It was known as The Mint.
All this while we have been trying to reach the night watchman.
In the early youth of Arcadia there came to her borders a warlock Finn, of ruddy countenance and solid build. He had a Finnish name, and they called him Lars Porsena.
Lars P. had been a seafaring man. While spending a year’s wage in San Francisco, he had wandered into Arcadia by accident. There, being unable to find the sea, he became a lumberjack—with a custom, when in spirits, of beating the watchman of that date into an omelet.
The indulgence of this penchant gave occasion for much adverse criticism. Fine and imprisonment failed to deter him from this playful habit. One watchman tried to dissuade Lars from his foible with a club, and his successor even went so far as to shoot him—to shoot Lars P., of course, not his predecessor—the successor’s predecessor, not Lars Porsena’s—if he ever had one, which he hadn’t. (What we need is more pronouns.) He—the successor of the predecessor—resigned when Lars became convalescent; but Lars was no whit dismayed by this contretemps—in his first light-hearted moment he resumed his old amusement with unabated gayety.
Thus was one of our greatest railroad systems subjected to embarrassment and annoyance by the idiosyncrasies of an ignorant but cheerful sailor-man. The railroad resolved to submit no longer to such caprice. A middleweight of renown was imported, who—when he was able to be about again—bitterly reproached the president and demanded a bonus on the ground that he had knocked Lars down several times before he—Lars—got angry; and also because of a disquisition in the Finnish tongue which Lars Porsena had emitted during the procedure—which address, the prizefighter stated, had unnerved him and so led to his undoing. It was obviously, he said, of a nature inconceivably insulting; the memory of it rankled yet, though he had heard only the beginning and did not get the—But let that pass.
The thing became a scandal. Watchman succeeded watchman on the company payroll and the hospital list, until some one hit upon a happy and ingenious way to avoid this indignity. Lars Porsena was appointed watchman.