Booth Tarkington

“ THE FIRST LUCIUS BRUTUS ALLEN STORY
THE town was only about eighty years old, but it loved to think of itself as a “good old place,” and it habitually spoke of the residence of its principal citizen as “that old-fashioned Ricketts property.”
This was an under-statement: the Ricketts place was more than merely old-fashioned. So rapidly do fashions change in houses, nowadays, in small towns as well as in big, and so quickly does life become history, that the “Ricketts property” at fifty ears of age was an actual archæological relic. ”

“ And everybody knows that the best poets are almost always outrageously ordinary to look at. This is springtime, Joseph; and the wren lays an egg no bigger than a fairy's. The little birds——”
“By George!” Mr. Perley exclaimed, in real astonishment. “See here!! he said. “Had you been drinking a little yourself before you came in? If not, it's the first time I knew a person could get a talking jag on buttermilk.”
“No,” said Lucius, correcting him. “It's on apple-blossoms. She was sitting under 'em pretending to read a book, but I suppose she was thinking about you, Joe.” ”

“ All over town the old folks are coming out from their suppers to sit on their front porches, and the children are beginning to play hi-spy in and out among the trees. Pretty soon they'll all, old and young, be strolling up-town to hear the band play on the court house steps. I expect some of the young couples already have started; they like to walk slowly and not say much, on the way to the spring concert, you know.”
Mr. Allen drank another glass of buttermilk, smiled, then murmured with repletion and the pathos of a concluding bit of enthusiasm. ”

“ He's the only young man in town not married, engaged, or feeble-minded, that hasn't ever showed any interest in Miss Mary. There's no two ways about it: likely as not it's liable to be Joe Perley!”
“I never heard anything crazier in my life!” Joe said. “I don't suppose Mary Ricketts has given me two thoughts in the last five years.” ”

“ This is a funny world: there's a lot of things a fellows got to be afraid of in it, and the older he gets the more he sees to scare him. I think what I like best about that old Ricketts property is the kind of safe look it has. ”

“ Allen thought fit to interpret this question—“and that I'm getting a little fat, some baldish, and a whole lot reddish. So I am; but I'll tell you something, young Joseph: romance is a thing inside a person, just the same as your thirst. It doesn't matter what his outside is like. My trousers always bag at the knees, even when they're new, but my knees themselves are pure Grecian. Its the skinny seamstress of forty that dreams the most of marquises in silver armor ”

“ People are liable to say anything at all.”
“Yes,” Miss Ricketts returned, not mollified. “I've just noticed.” She gave him one dark glance, wholly unfavorable, as she spoke, and then looked down at her book again, allowing him no possible doubt that she wished to proceed with her reading.
“I'm a hard man to discourage,” said Mr. Allen. “The band's going to play in the Square to-night. It's been practising 'Annie Laurie' and 'Tenting To-night' all winter, up in the storeroom over Tom Leggett's wall-paper and book emporium, and of course the boys are anxious to give their first concert. ”

“ Here the bartender permitted himself the intervention of a giggle, and wiped his dry bar industriously—his favorite gesture. “You ain't goin' to git much talk out o' Joe, Lu!” he said. “All he's said sence he come in here was jest, 'Gimme same, George. I tell him he ain't goin' to be in no condition to 'tend the band concert 's evening if he keeps on another couple hours or so. Me, I don't mind seein' a man drink some, but I like to see him git a little fun out of it!”
“Have you considered the band concert, Joe?” Mr. Allen inquired. ”

“ Mr. Allen rose, dusting some crumbs of cracker from his attire. “I guess I must have won the buttermilk record, George,” he said, as he placed a silver dollar upon the bar. “If buttermilk were intoxicating there it wouldn't be a sober creature on I the face of the earth. Trouble I with your other stuff, George, it tastes so rotten!”
“I take buttermilk sometimes myself, Lu,” said George as he made change. “I guess there ain't nobody seen me carryin' much hard liquor sence my second child was born. ”

“ In summer, sweet corn was still grown in the acre lot adjoining the barn-yard; and, between that lot and the driveway from the barn, there was a kitchen garden, there was an asparagus bed, and there was a strawberry patch fringed with currant-bushes. Behind the house were out-buildings: the storeroom, the wash-house, the smoke-house. ”

“ Contemplating the place you contemplated a prevalent way of life already abandoned, and learned a bit of Midland townsman was his own farmer, according to his means; and if he was able, kept his cow and chickens, and raised corn and pigs at home. ”

“ I want to git back up-town early fer the trade before the concert, because I look fer quite a rush——”
“Yes,” interrupted Mr. Allen, musingly, “Our community is going to see a night of wine and music, George.”
“I'll jest open a fresh bottle fer you, Joe,” the bartender continued; “and when I git back I'll charge you with how many drinks you take out of it; I got the place marked with my thumb. I'm goin' on home to supper. You want any more buttermilk, Lu?”
“Bring the pitcher,” said Mr. Allen. “I will sup upon it.”
THERE SAT, READING A BOOK, AN APPLE-BLOSSOM OF A GIRL.
“All right.” ”

“ You don't happen to walk by there much, do you, Joe?”
“No, I don't.”
“Well, sir, you ought to!” said Lucius genially. “The orchards in bloom, and you ought see it. The Ricketts orchard is the show of this county. The good old judge has surely looked after those old apple-trees of his; they're every one just solid blossom. Yes, it made me feel like a dryad!”
“Like a who?”
THE BARTENDER WIPED HIS DRY BAR.
“You mean that I'm thirty-five”—so Mr. ”