Truett had been better than his word. He had promised to finish the work by Christmas, but the formal opening ceremonies took place on Thanksgiving Day; and more than half the people of the county took part in it. With an eye to business the principal stockholders--the Claybanks merchants--hired a passenger train for the day, and gave the natives free rides to and from the nearest station that had a siding and switch by which the train could be sent back. The station had not a great town to support it,--merely five thousand people,--but as the Claybankers roamed through the place and saw many houses finer than any house in Claybanks, several streets that were paved with wooden blocks and many that had sidewalks, saw the telegraph and telephone wires, and a bank, and a fire-engine house, and horse-troughs into which fresh water flowed steadily from pipes which were part of a general service, their hearts were filled with the conviction that all these comforts and conveniences had come through the possession of a railway. Claybanks was in a fair way to become like unto that town, and they made haste, each after his kind, to rejoice. Then all of them who were farmers began to lay out, on their mental tablets, the appearance of their own farms as they would be when divided into building lots, and also to count the pleasing sums of money that would be paid by the purchasers of the lots, and also the many creature comforts which the money would buy. The first freight car that left Claybanks for business purposes was loaded with yellowish brown brick for New York, and all Claybanks was present to wave hats, handkerchiefs, hands, and aprons, as it moved slowly off. Claybanks wheat had gone East in times past, so had Claybanks pork, and undoubtedly these products had entered into the physical constitution of New York to some extent, but they could not afterward be identified. Claybanks bricks, however, were very different. They would be seen by every one, and they would make Claybanks literally a part of the metropolis itself. The meaning of all this was felt by the people of all classes; even Pastor Grateway was so impressed by it that he preached a sermon from the text, "They shall speak with the enemy in the gates," and that there should be no doubt as to who "they" were, a brown brick was at each side of the pulpit for the sides of the open Bible to rest upon. The pastor, being a man of spiritual insight, did not neglect to enlarge upon the fact that the bricks themselves were originally clay--mere earth--that had been trampled underfoot for years, seemingly useless, until it had been conformed in shape and quality to the uses for which it had been designed from the foundation of the world, and that each brick was a reminder that the most insensate lump of human clay had in it the possibilities for which it had been created.