growing and doing business, it had always found the days
long enough. Drays passed through it to the Grand Trunk
station, but they passed one at a time; a certain number
of people went up and down about their affairs, but they
were never in a hurry; a street car jogged by every ten
minutes or so, but nobody ran after it. There was a decent
procedure; and it was felt that Bofield--he was dry-goods,
too--in putting in an elevator was just a little
unnecessarily in advance of the times. Bofield had only
two storeys, like everybody else, and a very easy staircase,
up which people often declared they preferred to walk
rather than wait in the elevator for a young man to finish
serving and work it. These, of course, were the
sophisticated people of Elgin; countryfolk, on a market
day, would wait a quarter of an hour for the young man
and think nothing of it; and I imagine Bofield found his
account in the elevator, though he did complain sometimes
that such persons went up and down on frivolous pretexts
or to amuse the baby. As a matter of fact, Elgin had
begun as the centre of "trading" for the farmers of Fox
County, and had soon over-supplied that limit in demand;
so that when other interests added themselves to the
activity of the town there was still plenty of room for
the business they brought. Main Street was really,
therefore, not a fair index; nobody in Elgin would have
admitted it. Its appearance and demeanour would never
have suggested that it was now the chief artery of a
thriving manufacturing town, with a collegiate institute,
eleven churches, two newspapers, and an asylum for the
deaf and dumb, to say nothing of a fire department