Topographically speaking the starting point of Benham was its
water-course. Twenty years before the war Benham was merely a cluster of
frame houses in the valley of the limpid, peaceful river Nye. At that
time the inhabitants drank of the Nye taken at a point below the town,
for there was a high fall which would have made the drawing of water
above less convenient. This they were doing when Selma came to Benham,
although every man's hand had been raised against the Nye, which was the
nearest, and hence for a community in hot haste, the most natural
receptacle for dyestuffs, ashes and all the outflow from woollen mills,
pork factories and oil yards, and it ran the color of glistening bean
soup. From time to time, as the city grew, the drawing point had been
made a little lower where the stream had regained a portion of its
limpidity, and no one but wiseacres and busybodies questioned its
wholesomeness. Benham at that time was too preoccupied and too proud of
its increasing greatness to mistrust its own judgment in matters
hygienic, artistic, and educational. There came a day later when the
river rose against the city, and an epidemic of typhoid fever convinced
a reluctant community that there were some things which free-born
Americans did not know intuitively. Then there were public meetings and
a general indignation movement, and presently, under the guidance of
competent experts, Lake Mohunk, seven miles to the north, was secured as
a reservoir. Just to show how the temper of the times has changed, and
how sophisticated in regard to hygienic matters some of the good
citizens of Benham in these latter days have become, it is worthy of
mention that, though competent chemists declare Lake Mohunk to be free
from contamination, there are those now who use so-called mineral
spring-waters in preference; notably Miss Flagg, the daughter of old
Joel Flagg, once the miller and, at the date when the Babcocks set up
their household gods, one of the oil magnates of Benham. He drank the