It was on such fertile soil that one of the Wide-a-Wakefield circulars fell.
It chimed so well with Barstow's mood that he decided at least to look the town over.
He came unannounced to make his own observations, like the spies sent into Canaan. The trolley-car that met his train was rusty, paintless, forlorn, untenanted. He took a ramshackle hack to the best hotel. Its sign-board bore this legend: "The Palace, formerly Shelby House—entirely new management."
He saw his baggage bestowed and went out to inspect the factory building described to him. The cutlery-works proved smaller than his needs, and it had a weary look. Not far away he found a far larger factory, idle, empty, closed. The sign declared it to be the Wakefield Branch of the Shelby Paradise Powder Company. He knew the prosperity of that firm and wondered why this branch had been abandoned.
In the course of time the trolley-car overtook him, and he boarded it as a sole passenger.
The lonely motorman was loquacious and welcomed Barstow as the Ancient Mariner welcomed the wedding guest. He explained that he made but few trips a day and passengers were fewer than trips. The company kept it going to hold the franchise, for some day Wakefield would reach sixteen thousand and lift the hoodoo.
The car passed an opera-house, with grass aspiring through the chinks of the stone steps leading to the boarded-up doors.
The car passed the Shelby Block; the legend, "For Rent, apply to Amasa Harbury," hid the list of Shelby enterprises.
The car grumbled through shabby streets to the outskirts of the town, where it sizzled along a singing wire past the drooping fences, the sagging bleachers, and the weedy riot of what had been a pleasure-ground. A few dim lines in the grass marked the ghost of a baseball diamond, a circular track, and foregone tennis-courts.
Barstow could read on what remained of the tottering fence: