then from "Gotham to Gooseville" is the most scintillating epigram ever
achieved. Nothing was going on at Gooseville except time and the milk
wagon collecting for the creamery. The latter came rumbling along every
morning at 4.30 precisely, with a clatter of cans that never failed to
arouse the soundest sleeper.

The general dreariness of the landscape was depressing. Nature herself
seemed in a lethargic trance, and her name was mud.

But with a house to furnish and twenty-five enfeebled acres to
resuscitate, one must not mind. Advanced scientists assure us of life,
motion, even intelligence, appetite, and affection in the most primitive
primordial atoms. So, after a little study, I found that the inhabitants
of Gooseville and its outlying hamlets were neither dead nor sleeping.
It was only by contrast that they appeared comatose and moribund.

Indeed, the degree of gayety was quite startling. I was at once invited
to "gatherings" which rejoiced in the paradoxical title of "Mum
Sociables," where a penalty of five cents was imposed on each person
for speaking (the revenue to go toward buying a new hearse, a cheerful
object of benevolence), and the occasions were most enjoyable. There was
also a "crazy party" at Way-back, the next village. This special form of
lunacy I did not indulge in--farming was enough for me--but the painter
who was enlivening my dining-room with a coating of vivid red and green,
kindly told me all about it, how much I missed, and how the couple
looked who took the first prize. The lady wore tin plates, tin cans, tin
spoons, etc., sewed on to skirt and waist in fantastic patterns, making
music as she walked, and on her head a battered old coffee pot, with
artificial flowers which had outlived their usefulness sticking out of
the spout; and her winning partner was arrayed in rag patchwork of the