Let me turn more
broadly to our town and its good people for that needed recreation which
they never fail to afford me.
"Arcady of the Little Country," we often say. On maps it is Little
Arcady, county seat of Slocum County, an isle and haven in the dreary
land sea that flattens away from it on every side,--north to the big
woods, south to the swamp counties, and east and west, one might almost
say, a thousand miles to the mountains. Our point is one from which to
say either "back East" or "out West." It is neither, of itself, though
it touches both.
We are so ancient that plenty of us remember the stone fireplace in the
log-cabin, with its dusters for the hearth of buffalo tail and
wild-turkey wing, with iron pot hung by a chain from the chimney hook,
with pewter or wooden plates from which to eat with horn-handled knives
and iron spoons. But yet are we so modern that we have fine new houses
with bay windows, ornamental cupolas, and porches raving woodenly in
that frettish fever which the infamous scroll-saw put upon fifty years
of our land's domestic architecture. And these houses are furnished with
splendid modern furniture, even with black walnut, gold touched and
upholstered in blue plush and maroon, fresh from the best factories.
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