Carol was volunteer nurse when Mrs. Champ Perry suddenly died of pneumonia3.
In her funeral procession were the eleven people left out of the Grand Army and the Territorial4 Pioneers, old men and women, very old and weak, who a few decades ago had been boys and girls of the frontier, riding broncos through the rank windy grass of this prairie. They hobbled behind a band made up of business men and high-school boys, who straggled along without uniforms or ranks or leader, trying to play Chopin’s Funeral March — a shabby group of neighbors with grave eyes, stumbling through the slush under a solemnity of faltering6 music.
Champ was broken. His rheumatism7 was worse. The rooms over the store were silent. He could not do his work as buyer at the elevator. Farmers coming in with sled-loads of wheat complained that Champ could not read the scale, that he seemed always to be watching some one back in the darkness of the bins8. He was seen slipping through alleys9, talking to himself, trying to avoid observation, creeping at last to the cemetery10. Once Carol followed him and found the coarse, tobacco-stained, unimaginative old man lying on the snow of the grave, his thick arms spread out across the raw mound11 as if to protect her from the cold, her whom he had carefully covered up every night for sixty years, who was alone there now, uncared for.
The elevator company, Ezra Stowbody president, let him go. The company, Ezra explained to Carol, had no funds for giving pensions.
She tried to have him appointed to the postmastership, which, since all the work was done by assistants, was the one sinecure13 in town, the one reward for political purity. But it proved that Mr. Bert Tybee, the former bartender, desired the postmastership.
At her solicitation14 Lyman Cass gave Champ a warm berth15 as night watchman. Small boys played a good many tricks on Champ when he fell asleep at the mill.
II
She had vicarious happiness in the return of Major Raymond Wutherspoon. He was well, but still weak from having been gassed; he had been discharged and he came home as the first of the war veterans. It was rumored16 that he surprised Vida by coming unannounced, that Vida fainted when she saw him, and for a night and day would not share him with the town. When Carol saw them Vida was hazy17 about everything except Raymie, and never went so far from him that she could not slip her hand under his. Without understanding why Carol was troubled by this intensity18. And Raymie — surely this was not Raymie, but a sterner brother of his, this man with the tight blouse, the shoulder emblems19, the trim legs in boots. His face seemed different, his lips more tight. He was not Raymie; he was Major Wutherspoon; and Kennicott and Carol were grateful when he divulged20 that Paris wasn’t half as pretty as Minneapolis, that all of the American soldiers had been distinguished21 by their morality when on leave. Kennicott was respectful as he inquired whether the Germans had good aeroplanes, and what a salient was, and a cootie, and Going West.
In a week Major Wutherspoon was made full manager of the Bon Ton. Harry22 Haydock was going to devote himself to the half-dozen branch stores which he was establishing at crossroads hamlets. Harry would be the town’s rich man in the coming generation, and Major Wutherspoon would rise with him, and Vida was jubilant, though she was regretful at having to give up most of her Red Cross work. Ray still needed nursing, she explained.
When Carol saw him with his uniform off, in a pepper-and salt suit and a new gray felt hat, she was disappointed. He was not Major Wutherspoon; he was Raymie
For a month small boys followed him down the street, and everybody called him Major, but that was presently shortened to Maje, and the small boys did not look up from their marbles as he went by.
III
The town was booming, as a result of the war price of wheat.
The wheat money did not remain in the pockets of the farmers; the towns existed to take care of all that. Iowa farmers were selling their land at four hundred dollars an acre and coming into Minnesota. But whoever bought or sold or mortgaged, the townsmen invited themselves to the feast — millers23, real-estate men, lawyers, merchants, and Dr. Will Kennicott. They bought land at a hundred and fifty, sold it next day at a hundred and seventy, and bought again. In three months Kennicott made seven thousand dollars, which was rather more than four times as much as society paid him for healing the sick.
In early summer began a “campaign of boosting.” The Commercial Club decided24 that Gopher Prairie was not only a wheat-center but also the perfect site for factories, summer cottages, and state institutions. In charge of the campaign was Mr. James Blausser, who had recently come to town to speculate in land. Mr. Blausser was known as a Hustler. He liked to be called Honest Jim. He was a bulky, gauche25, noisy, humorous man, with narrow eyes, a rustic26 complexion27, large red hands, and brilliant clothes. He was attentive28 to all women. He was the first man in town who had not been sensitive enough to feel Carol’s aloofness29. He put his arm about her shoulder while he condescended30 to Kennicott, “Nice lil wifey, I’ll say, doc,” and when she answered, not warmly, “Thank you very much for the imprimatur,” he blew on her neck, and did not know that he had been insulted.
He was a layer-on of hands. He never came to the house without trying to paw her. He touched her arm, let his fist brush her side. She hated the man, and she was afraid of him. She wondered if he had heard of Erik, and was taking advantage. She spoke31 ill of him at home and in public places, but Kennicott and the other powers insisted, “Maybe he is kind of a roughneck, but you got to hand it to him; he’s got more git-up-and-git than any fellow that ever hit this burg. And he’s pretty cute, too. Hear what he said to old Ezra? Chucked him in the ribs32 and said, ‘Say, boy, what do you want to go to Denver for? Wait ‘ll I get time and I’ll move the mountains here. Any mountain will be tickled33 to death to locate here once we get the White Way in!’ ”
The town welcomed Mr. Blausser as fully12 as Carol snubbed him. He was the guest of honor at the Commercial Club Banquet at the Minniemashie House, an occasion for menus printed in gold (but injudiciously proof-read), for free cigars, soft damp slabs34 of Lake Superior whitefish served as fillet of sole, drenched35 cigar-ashes gradually filling the saucers of coffee cups, and oratorical36 references to Pep, Punch, Go, Vigor37, Enterprise, Red Blood, He–Men, Fair Women, God’s Country, James J. Hill, the Blue Sky, the Green Fields, the Bountiful Harvest, Increasing Population, Fair Return on Investments, Alien Agitators38 Who Threaten the Security of Our Institutions, the Hearthstone the Foundation of the State, Senator Knute Nelson, One Hundred Per Cent. Americanism, and Pointing with Pride.
Harry Haydock, as chairman, introduced Honest Jim Blausser. “And I am proud to say, my fellow citizens, that in his brief stay here Mr. Blausser has become my warm personal friend as well as my fellow booster, and I advise you all to very carefully attend to the hints of a man who knows how to achieve.”
Mr. Blausser reared up like an elephant with a camel’s neck — red faced, red eyed, heavy fisted, slightly belching39 — a born leader, divinely intended to be a congressman40 but deflected41 to the more lucrative42 honors of real-estate. He smiled on his warm personal friends and fellow boosters, and boomed:
“I certainly was astonished in the streets of our lovely little city, the other day. I met the meanest kind of critter that God ever made — meaner than the horned toad43 or the Texas lallapaluza! (Laughter.) And do you know what the animile was? He was a knocker! (Laughter and applause.)
“I want to tell you good people, and it’s just as sure as God made little apples, the thing that distinguishes our American commonwealth44 from the pikers and tin-horns in other countries is our Punch. You take a genuwine, honest-to-God homo Americanibus and there ain’t anything he’s afraid to tackle. Snap and speed are his middle name! He’ll put her across if he has to ride from hell to breakfast, and believe me, I’m mighty45 good and sorry for the boob that’s so unlucky as to get in his way, because that poor slob is going to wonder where he was at when Old Mr. Cyclone46 hit town! (Laughter.)
“Now, frien’s, there’s some folks so yellow and small and so few in the pod that they go to work and claim that those — of us that have the big vision are off our trolleys47. They say we can’t make Gopher Prairie, God bless her! just as big as Minneapolis or St. Paul or Duluth. But lemme tell you right here and now that there ain’t a town under the blue canopy48 of heaven that’s got a better chance to take a running jump and go scooting right up into the two-hundred-thousand class than little old G. P.! And if there’s anybody that’s got such cold kismets that he’s afraid to tag after Jim Blausser on the Big Going Up, then we don’t want him here! Way I figger it, you folks are just patriotic49 enough so that you ain’t going to stand for any guy sneering50 and knocking his own town, no matter how much of a smart Aleck he is — and just on the side I want to add that this Farmers’ Nonpartisan League and the whole bunch of socialists51 are right in the same category, or, as the fellow says, in the same scategory, meaning This Way Out, Exit, Beat It While the Going’s Good, This Means You, for all knockers of prosperity and the rights of property!
“Fellow citizens, there’s a lot of folks, even right here in this fair state, fairest and richest of all the glorious union, that stand up on their hind5 legs and claim that the East and Europe put it all over the golden Northwestland. Now let me nail that lie right here and now. ‘Ah-ha,’ says they, ‘so Jim Blausser is claiming that Gopher Prairie is as good a place to live in as London and Rome and — and all the rest of the Big Burgs, is he? How does the poor fish know?’ says they. Well I’ll tell you how I know! I’ve seen ’em! I’ve done Europe from soup to nuts! They can’t spring that stuff on Jim Blausser and get away with it! And let me tell you that the only live thing in Europe is our boys that are fighting there now! London — I spent three days, sixteen straight hours a day, giving London the once-over, and let me tell you that it’s nothing but a bunch of fog and out-of-date buildings that no live American burg would stand for one minute. You may not believe it, but there ain’t one first-class skyscraper52 in the whole works. And the same thing goes for that crowd of crabs53 and snobs54 Down East, and next time you hear some zob from Yahooville-on-the-Hudson chewing the rag and bulling and trying to get your goat, you tell him that no two-fisted enterprising Westerner would have New York for a gift!
“Now the point of this is: I’m not only insisting that Gopher Prairie is going to be Minnesota’s pride, the brightest ray in the glory of the North Star State, but also and furthermore that it is right now, and still more shall be, as good a place to live in, and love in, and bring up the Little Ones in, and it’s got as much refinement55 and culture, as any burg on the whole bloomin’ expanse of God’s Green Footstool, and that goes, get me, that goes!”
Half an hour later Chairman Haydock moved a vote of thanks to Mr. Blausser.
The boosters’ campaign was on.
The town sought that efficient and modern variety of fame which is known as “publicity.” The band was reorganized, and provided by the Commercial Club with uniforms of purple and gold. The amateur baseball-team hired a semi-professional pitcher56 from Des Moines, and made a schedule of games with every town for fifty miles about. The citizens accompanied it as “rooters,” in a special car, with banners lettered “Watch Gopher Prairie Grow,” and with the band playing “Smile, Smile, Smile.” Whether the team won or lost the Dauntless loyally shrieked57, “Boost, Boys, and Boost Together — Put Gopher Prairie on the Map — Brilliant Record of Our Matchless Team.”
Then, glory of glories, the town put in a White Way. White Ways were in fashion in the Middlewest. They were composed of ornamented58 posts with clusters of high-powered electric lights along two or three blocks on Main Street. The Dauntless confessed: “White Way Is Installed — Town Lit Up Like Broadway — Speech by Hon. James Blausser — Come On You Twin Cities — Our Hat Is In the Ring.”
The Commercial Club issued a booklet prepared by a great and expensive literary person from a Minneapolis advertising59 agency, a red-headed young man who smoked cigarettes in a long amber60 holder61. Carol read the booklet with a certain wonder. She learned that Plover62 and Minniemashie Lakes were world-famed for their beauteous wooded shores and gamey pike and bass63 not to be equalled elsewhere in the entire country; that the residences of Gopher Prairie were models of dignity, comfort, and culture, with lawns and gardens known far and wide; that the Gopher Prairie schools and public library, in its neat and commodious64 building, were celebrated65 throughout the state; that the Gopher Prairie mills made the best flour in the country; that the surrounding farm lands were renowned66, where’er men ate bread and butter, for their incomparable No. 1 Hard Wheat and Holstein–Friesian cattle; and that the stores in Gopher Prairie compared favorably with Minneapolis and Chicago in their abundance of luxuries and necessities and the ever-courteous attention of the skilled clerks. She learned, in brief, that this was the one Logical Location for factories and wholesale67 houses.
“THERE’S where I want to go; to that model town Gopher Prairie,” said Carol.
Kennicott was triumphant68 when the Commercial Club did capture one small shy factory which planned to make wooden automobile-wheels, but when Carol saw the promoter she could not feel that his coming much mattered — and a year after, when he failed, she could not be very sorrowful.
Retired69 farmers were moving into town. The price of lots had increased a third. But Carol could discover no more pictures nor interesting food nor gracious voices nor amusing conversation nor questing minds. She could, she asserted, endure a shabby but modest town; the town shabby and egomaniac she could not endure. She could nurse Champ Perry, and warm to the neighborliness of Sam Clark, but she could not sit applauding Honest Jim Blausser. Kennicott had begged her, in courtship days, to convert the town to beauty. If it was now as beautiful as Mr. Blausser and the Dauntless said, then her work was over, and she could go.
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1
diligent
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| adj.勤勉的，勤奋的 | |
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2
raved
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| v.胡言乱语( rave的过去式和过去分词 )；愤怒地说；咆哮；痴心地说 | |
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pneumonia
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| n.肺炎 | |
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territorial
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| adj.领土的，领地的 | |
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hind
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| adj.后面的，后部的 | |
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faltering
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| 犹豫的，支吾的，蹒跚的 | |
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rheumatism
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| n.风湿病 | |
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8
bins
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| n.大储藏箱( bin的名词复数 )；宽口箱（如面包箱，垃圾箱等）v.扔掉，丢弃( bin的第三人称单数 ) | |
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alleys
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| 胡同，小巷( alley的名词复数 )； 小径 | |
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cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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mound
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| n.土墩，堤，小山；v.筑堤，用土堆防卫 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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sinecure
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| n.闲差事，挂名职务 | |
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solicitation
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| n.诱惑；揽货；恳切地要求；游说 | |
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berth
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| n.卧铺，停泊地，锚位；v.使停泊 | |
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rumored
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| adj.传说的，谣传的v.传闻( rumor的过去式和过去分词 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷 | |
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17
hazy
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| adj.有薄雾的，朦胧的；不肯定的，模糊的 | |
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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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emblems
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| n.象征，标记( emblem的名词复数 ) | |
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divulged
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| v.吐露，泄露( divulge的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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21
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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23
millers
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| n.（尤指面粉厂的）厂主( miller的名词复数 )；磨房主；碾磨工；铣工 | |
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24
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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gauche
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| adj.笨拙的，粗鲁的 | |
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26
rustic
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| adj.乡村的，有乡村特色的；n.乡下人，乡巴佬 | |
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complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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attentive
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| adj.注意的，专心的；关心(别人)的，殷勤的 | |
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aloofness
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| 超然态度 | |
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30
condescended
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| 屈尊，俯就( condescend的过去式和过去分词 )； 故意表示和蔼可亲 | |
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31
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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32
ribs
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| n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹 | |
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33
tickled
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| （使）发痒( tickle的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）愉快，逗乐 | |
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slabs
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| n.厚板，平板，厚片( slab的名词复数 )；厚胶片 | |
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drenched
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| adj.湿透的；充满的v.使湿透( drench的过去式和过去分词 )；在某人（某物）上大量使用（某液体） | |
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oratorical
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| adj.演说的，雄辩的 | |
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vigor
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| n.活力，精力，元气 | |
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38
agitators
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| n.（尤指政治变革的）鼓动者( agitator的名词复数 )；煽动者；搅拌器；搅拌机 | |
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39
belching
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| n. 喷出，打嗝 动词belch的现在分词形式 | |
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Congressman
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| n.（美）国会议员 | |
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41
deflected
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| 偏离的 | |
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42
lucrative
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| adj.赚钱的，可获利的 | |
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43
toad
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| n.蟾蜍，癞蛤蟆 | |
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44
commonwealth
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| n.共和国，联邦，共同体 | |
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45
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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46
cyclone
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| n.旋风，龙卷风 | |
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47
trolleys
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| n.（两轮或四轮的）手推车( trolley的名词复数 )；装有脚轮的小台车；电车 | |
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48
canopy
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| n.天篷，遮篷 | |
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49
patriotic
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| adj.爱国的，有爱国心的 | |
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50
sneering
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| 嘲笑的，轻蔑的 | |
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51
socialists
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| 社会主义者( socialist的名词复数 ) | |
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52
skyscraper
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| n.摩天大楼 | |
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53
crabs
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| n.蟹( crab的名词复数 )；阴虱寄生病；蟹肉v.捕蟹( crab的第三人称单数 ) | |
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snobs
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| （谄上傲下的）势利小人( snob的名词复数 )； 自高自大者，自命不凡者 | |
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55
refinement
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| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
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56
pitcher
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| n.(有嘴和柄的)大水罐；(棒球)投手 | |
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57
shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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ornamented
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| adj.花式字体的v.装饰，点缀，美化( ornament的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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advertising
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| n.广告业；广告活动 a.广告的；广告业务的 | |
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amber
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| n.琥珀；琥珀色；adj.琥珀制的 | |
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61
holder
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| n.持有者，占有者；(台，架等)支持物 | |
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plover
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| n.珩，珩科鸟，千鸟 | |
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63
bass
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| n.男低音(歌手)；低音乐器；低音大提琴 | |
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64
commodious
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| adj.宽敞的；使用方便的 | |
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celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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renowned
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| adj.著名的，有名望的，声誉鹊起的 | |
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67
wholesale
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| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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68
triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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