hall, and black-walnut finish all through the first floor. It was
considered the best house at the time in Eastridge, and I guess it was.
But now, I don't say but what it's old-fashioned. I have to own up to
that with the girls, but I tell them so are we, and that seems to make
it all right for a while. I guess we sha'n't change."

He continued to stare at the simple-hearted edifice, so simple-hearted
in its out-dated pretentiousness, and then he turned and leaned over
the top of the fence where he had left his arms lying, while
contemplating the early monument of his success. In making my
journalistic study, more or less involuntary, of Eastridge, I had put
him down as materially the first man of the place; I might have gone
farther and put him down as the first man intellectually. We folk who
have to do more constantly with reading and writing are apt to think
that the other folk who have more to do with making and marketing have
not so much mind, but I fancy we make a mistake in that now and then.
It is only another kind of mind which they have quite as much of as we
have of ours. It was intellectual force that built up the Plated-Ware
Works of Eastridge, where there was no other reason for their being,
and it was mental grip that held constantly to the management, and
finally grasped the ownership. Nobody ever said that Talbert had come
unfairly into that, or that he had misused his money in buying men
after he began to come into it in quantity. He was felt in a great many
ways, though he made something of a point of not being prominent in
politics, after being president of the village two terms. The minister
of his church was certainly such a preacher as he liked; and nothing
was done in the church society without him; he gave the town a library
building, and a soldier's monument; he was foremost in getting the
water brought in, which was natural enough since he needed it the most;
he took a great interest in school matters, and had a fight to keep