Stickeen

Lakeside was a pleasant little town of five or six thousand inhabitants, and a rather pretty one, too, as towns go in the Far West. It had church accommodations for thirtyfive thousand, which is the way of the Far West and the South, where everybody is religious, and where each of the Protestant sects is represented and has a plant of its own. Rank was unknown in Lakesideunconfessed, anyway; everybody knew everybody and his dog, and a sociable friendliness was the prevailing atmosphere. Saladin Foster was bookkeeper in the principal store, and the only highsalaried man of his profession in Lakeside. He was thirtyfive years old, now; he had served that store for fourteen years; he had begun in his marriageweek at four hundred dollars a year, and had climbed steadily up, a hundred dollars a year, for four years; from that time forth his wage had remained eight hundreda handsome figure indeed, and everybody conceded that he was worth it. His wife, Electra, was a capable helpmeet, althoughlike himself a dreamer of dreams and a private dabbler in romance. The first thing she did, after her marriagechild as she was, aged only nineteen was to buy an acre of ground on the edge of the town, and pay down the cash for ittwentyfive dollars, all her fortune. Saladin had less, by fifteen. She instituted a vegetable garden there, got it farmed on shares by the nearest neighbor, and made it pay her a hundred per cent. a year. Out of Saladin's first year's wage she put thirty dollars in the savingsbank, sixty out of his second, a hundred out of his third, a hundred and fifty out of his fourth. His wage went to eight hundred a year, then, and meantime two children had arrived and increased the expenses, but she banked two hundred a year from the salary, nevertheless, thenceforth. When she had been married seven years she built and furnished a pretty and comfortable twothousanddollar house in the midst of her gardenacre, paid half of the money down and moved her family in. Seven years later she was out of debt and had several hundred dollars out earning its living

Dettagli