might ever hope to call its own.

Through years the fitful happenings of the town
and its vicinity went on the same--the same! Annually
about one circus ventured in, and vanished,
and was gone, even as a passing trumpet-blast; the
usual rainy season swelled the "Crick," the driftage
choking at "the covered bridge," and backing water
till the old road looked amphibious; and crowds
of curious townfolk struggled down to look upon
the watery wonder, and lean awestruck above it,
and spit in it, and turn mutely home again.

The usual formula of incidents peculiar to an
uneventful town and its vicinity: The countryman
from "Jessup's Crossing," with the corn-stalk coffin-
measure, loped into town, his steaming little gray-
and-red-flecked "roadster" gurgitating, as it were, with that
mysterious utterance that ever has
commanded and ever must evoke the wonder and
bewilderment of every boy; the small-pox rumor
became prevalent betimes, and the subtle aroma of
the asafetida-bag permeated the graded schools
"from turret to foundation-stone"; the still
recurring expose of the poor-house management; the
farm-hand, with the scythe across his shoulder,
struck dead by lightning; the long-drawn quarrel
between the rival editors culminating in one of them
assaulting the other with a "sidestick," and the other
kicking the one down-stairs and thenceward ad