Western, or rather Northwestern, town life, when the town has less than
ten thousand people, varies little with the locality. There is the
same vigor everywhere, because conditions are so similar. It is odd,
too, the close resemblance all through the great lake region in the
local geography of the towns. Small streams run into larger ones, and
these in turn enter the inland seas, or the straits, called rivers,
which connect them. Where the small rivers enter the larger ones, or
where the larger enter the straits or lakes, men made the towns. These
were the water cross-roads, the intersections of nature's highways, and
so it comes that to so many of these towns there is the great blue
water front intersected at its middle by a river. There is a bridge in
the town's main street, and the smell of water is ever in the air.
Boys learn to swim like otters and skate like Hollanders, and their
sisters emulate them in the skating, though not so much in the swimming
as they should. There is a life full of great swing. The touch
between the town and country is exceedingly close, and the country
family which comes to the community blends swiftly with the current.
So with the family of Grant Harlson and so with him personally. A year
made him collared and cravatted, short-cropped of hair, mighty in
high-school frays, and with a new ambition stirring him, of a quality
to compare with that of one Lucifer of unbounded reputation and
doubtful biography. There was something beyond all shooting and riding
and wrestling fame and the breath of growing things. There was another
world with reachable prizes and much to feed upon. He must wear
medals, metaphorically, and eat his fill, in time.

The high-school is really the first telescope through which a boy so
born and bred looks fairly out upon this planet. The astronomer who
instructs him is often of just the sort for the labor, a being also
climbing, one not to be a high-school principal forever, but using this