I

I

––––––––

LIFE in the small towns of the older West moves slowly—almost as slowly as in the seaport villages or little towns of the East. Towns like Tyre and Bluff Siding have grown during the last twenty years, but very slowly, by almost imperceptible degrees. Lying too far away from the Mississippi to be affected by the lumber interest, they are merely trading points for the farmers, with no perceivable germs of boom in their quiet life.

A stranger coming into Belfast, Minnesota, excites much the same languid but persistent inquiry as in Belfast, New Hampshire. Juries of men, seated on salt barrels and nail-kegs, discuss the stranger's appearance and his probable action, just as in Kittery, Maine, but with a lazier speech tune and with a shade less of apparent interest.

On such a rainy d……