In reality he was a tale-teller, but that was no craft among us. No union had been formed among tale-tellers. The Authors’ League, the Pen Women, the Poet’s Club, etc., had not yet been formed or, if there were such organizations in existence, they at any rate did not reach down into mid-American towns. At that time even the rumors of the vast sums to be made by turning out clever plot stories for the popular magazines or the movies had not been whispered about. Other and more significant-seeming stories were floating however. A new kind of hero, tarnished somewhat later, filled the popular eye. As we boys went about in the main street of our town, citizens, feeling a kindly interest in the motherless sons, continually stopped us. Everyone was singing a new little song: “Get on. Make money. Get to the top. A penny saved is a penny earned. Money makes the mare go.” “Save up your money, and save up your rocks. And you’ll always have tobacco in the old tobacco box,” sang Sil West, the smith, who was shoeing a horse in the alleyway back of the stores on our main street. The factories were calling. One went into a factory, did his work with care and skill, became foreman, superintendent, part owner, married the banker’s daughter, got rich and went off to Paris to sin the sins neglected during so busy a youth and early manhood. It sounded reasonable and possible. Learning a craft was slow business and one was in a hurry. “Hurry” was the battle cry of the day. And the time of the factories was just at hand. At that time they were coming into Ohio, and into all the mid-American states in great numbers, and no town was without hope of becoming an industrial centre. The bicycle had come, followed by the automobile, and even the quiet country roads were taking on the new spirit of speed. Something was in the air. One breathed a new spirit into the lungs. The paradise, later to be represented by the ford, the city apartment building with tiled bathroom floors, subways, jazz, the movies--was it not all just at hand? I myself and long afterward tried a little, in a novel of mine called, “Poor White,” to give something of the feeling of life in our towns at that time. Oil and gas were spurting out of the ground in Ohio and the discovery of oil and gas meant the coming of factories, it meant the New Age, prosperity, growth going onward and upward. “Death to everything old, slow and careful! Forward the Light Brigade! Theirs not to ask the reason why! Theirs but to do or die”--the light brigade in our particular town consisting of every merchant, doctor, workman, lawyer, who had saved a few pennies that could be invested. In our ears rang stories of the Lima Boom, the Gibsonburg boom, the Finley boom.