Doctor Taggess, summoned for consultation on the drainage subject, promised to make an earnest speech at any general meeting that might be called; so Philip hurried about among the merchants, town and county officials, and other local magnates, and arranged for an anti-malaria, city-compelling mass-meeting at the court-house at an early date.
Political jealousies and personal dog-in-the-manger feeling are quite as common in small towns as in great ones, but the possibility of a village becoming a city, and farm property being cut up into building-lots at high prices, is the one darling hope of every little village in the far West, and at the right time—or even at the wrong one—it may be depended upon to weld all discordant elements into one great enthusiastic force. When the meeting was held, Doctor Taggess made a strong plea for the proposed improvement, from the standpoint of the public health; the young engineer read a mass of statistics on the amazing fertility of drained swamp lands, and announced his willingness to wait for his own pay until his work proved itself effective; and the county clerk told of scores of Western villages, settled no longer ago than Claybanks, that had become cities. The upshot was that the improvement plan was adopted without a dissenting voice, and the right of way was secured at the meeting itself, as was also a volunteer force to begin work at once on the main ditch.
"Truett," said Philip, after the meeting adjourned, and he, the engineer, and Doctor Taggess walked away together, "unless you've made some mistake in your figures, this enterprise will make you a great man in this section of country."
"That's what I wish it to do," was the reply, "for I must make a permanent start somewhere."
"Your offer to defer asking for pay till the drainage should prove successful," said the Doctor, "helped the movement amazingly, and it also made everybody think you a very fair man."
"Yes? Well, that's why I made it"
"H'm!" said Philip, "you've the stuff that'll make a successful Westerner of you."
"That's what I want to be."
"I don't think you'll regret it," said the Doctor; "for much though I sometimes long to return to the East, and plainly though I see the poverty and limitations of this part of the country, the West is the proper starting-place for a young man, unless he chances to have abundant capital. Even then he might do worse; for, of course, the newer the country, the greater the number of natural resources to be discovered and developed. The people, too, are interested in everything new, and stand together, to a degree unknown at the East, in favor of any improvements that are possible. They do their full share of grumbling and complaining, to say nothing of their full share of suffering, but there's scarcely one of them who doesn't secretly hope and expect to become rich some day, or at least to be part of a rich community; and they're not more than half wrong, for railways and manufactures must reach us, in the ordinary course of events, and all our people expect to see them. Let me give you an illustration. A year or two ago I drove out one Sunday to see a family of my acquaintance, living in a specially malarious part of the county, who were out of quinine—a common matter of forgetfulness, strange though it may seem. As I neared the house, I heard singing, of a peculiar, irregular kind. As 'twas Sunday, I supposed a neighborhood meeting was in progress. But there wasn't. One of the hundreds of projected Pacific railways had been surveyed through the farm a few months before. On the day of my call three of the seven members of the family were shaking with chills; so to keep up their spirits they were singing, to the music of a hymn-tune, some verses written and printed in the West long ago, and beginning:—
"'The great Pacific railroad
To California, hail!
Bring on the locomotive,
Lay down the iron rail.'