“W’l Josie was born an’ growed up,” continued Bill, “an’ it’s her I started to tell about, wa’n’t it? She was allus a cute little thing, an’ early she got this art business in her head. She’d read about fellers that had got to be great by paintin’ an’ carvin’, an’ it made her wild to do the same thing. Wa’n’t there a feller that pulled hair outer the cat to paint Injuns with? Yes, I thought they was; I allus thought they could paint theirselves good enough; but that story an’ some others she read an’ read when she was a little gal, an’ she was allus a-paintin’ an’ makin’ things with clay. She took a prize at the county fair when she was fourteen, with a picter of Washin’ton crossin’ the Delaware—three dollars, by gum! An’ then we hed to give her lessons; an’ they wasn’t any one thet knew anything around here, she said, an’ she went to Chicago. An’ I went in to visit her when she hedn’t ben there more’n six weeks, on an excursion one convention time, an’ I found her all tore up, a good deal as her ma was with the blue racer,—I don’t think she’s ever ben the same light-hearted little gal sence,—an’ from there I took her to New York; an’ there she fell in with a nice woman that was awful good to her, an’ they went to Europe, an’ it cost a heap. An’ you may’ve noticed thet Josie knows a pile more’n the other women here?”
I admitted that this had occurred to me.
“W’l, she was allus apt to take her head with her,” said Bill, “but this travelin’ has fixed her like a hoss thet’s ben druv in Chicago: nothin’ feazes her, street-cars, brass bands, circuses, overhead trains—it’s all the same to her, she’s seen ’em all. Sometimes I git the notion that she’d enjoy things more if she hadn’t seen so dum many of ’em an’ so much better ones, y’ know! Wal, after she’d ben over there a long time, she wrote she was a-comin’ home; an’ we was tickled to death. Only I was surprised by her writin’ that she wanted us to take all them old picters of hern, and put ’em out of sight! An’ if you’ll b’lieve it, she won’t talk picters nor make any sence she got back—only, jest after she got back, she said she didn’t see any use o’ her goin’ on dobbin’ good canvas up with good paint, an’ makin’ nothin’ but poor picters; an’ she cried some.... I thought it was sing’lar that this art business that she thought was the only thing thet’d ever make her happy was the only thing I ever see her cry about.”
“It’s the way,” said I, “with a great many of our cherished hopes.”
“W’l, anyhow, you can see thet it’s the wrong thing to put as much time an’ money into fixin’ a child up f’r a different kind o’ life as we hev, an’ then keep her on a farm out here. An’ thet’s why I want you to help this sale through, an’ bring influence to bear on her. I give up; I’m all in.”
To me Bill seemed entirely in the right. The new era made it absurd for the Trescotts to use their land longer as a farm. Lattimore was changing daily. The streets were gashed with trenches for gas- and water-mains; piled-up materials for curbing, paving, office buildings, new hotels, and all sorts of erections made locomotion a peril; but we were happy.
The water company was organized in our office, the gas and electric-light company in Cornish’s; but every spout led into the same bin.
Mr. Hinckley had induced some country dealers who owned a line of local grain-houses to remove to Lattimore and put up a huge terminal elevator for the handling of their trade. Captain Tolliver had been for a long time working upon a project for developing a great water-power, by tunneling across a bend in the river, and utilizing the fall. The building of the elevator attracted the attention of a company of Rochester millers, and almost before we knew it their forces had been added to ours, and the tunnel was begun, with the certainty that a two-thousand-barrel mill would be ready to grind the wheat from the elevator as soon as the flume began carrying water. This tunnel cut through an isthmus between the Brushy Creek valley and the river, and brought to bear on our turbines the head from a ten-mile loop of shoals and riffles. It opened into the gorge near the southern edge of Lynhurst Park, and crossed the Trescott farm. So it was that Bill awoke one day to the fact that his farm was coveted by divers people, who saw in his fields and feed-yards desirable sites for railway tracks, mills, factories, and the cottages of a manufacturing suburb. This it was that had put the Captain, like a blood-hound, on his trial, to the end that he was run to earth in my office, and made his appeal for help in managing Josie.
“There she comes now,” said he. “Labor with her, won’t yeh?”
“Bring her with us to the hotel,” said I, “to take dinner. If my wife and Elkins can’t fix the thing, no one can.”