Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net In Our Town BY WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE The Court of Boyville, The Real Issue, Stratagems and Spoils Illustrations by F. R. Gruger and W. Glackens NEW YORK McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. MCMVI Copyright 1906 by McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. Published April, 1906 Copyright 1904 by The Century Co. Copyright 1905-1906 by The Curtis Publishing Co. [Illustration: He wore his collars so high that he had to order them from a drummer] Contents I. SCRIBES AND PHARISEES II. THE YOUNG PRINCE III. THE SOCIETY EDITOR IV. "AS A BREATH INTO THE WIND" V. THE COMING OF THE LEISURE CLASS VI. THE BOLTON GIRL'S "POSITION" VII. "BY THE ROD OF HIS WRATH" VIII. "A BUNDLE OF MYRRH" IX. OUR LOATHED BUT ESTEEMED CONTEMPORARY X. A QUESTION OF CLIMATE XI. THE CASTING OUT OF JIMMY MYERS XII. "'A BABBLED OF GREEN FIELDS" XIII. A PILGRIM IN THE WILDERNESS XIV. THE PASSING OF PRISCILLA WINTHROP XV. "AND YET A FOOL" XVI. A KANSAS "CHILDE ROLAND" XVII. THE TREMOLO STOP XVIII. SOWN IN OUR WEAKNESS XIX. "THIRTY" LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS He Wore his Collars so High that He Had to Order Them from a Drummer Suppressing Nothing "On Account of the Respectability of the Parties Concerned" As an Office Joke the Boys Used to Leave a Step-Ladder by Her Desk so that She Could Climb Up and See How Her Top-Knot Really Looked And Brought with Him a Large Leisure and a Taste for Society Sometimes He Thought It was a Report of a Fire and at Other Times It Seemed Like a Dress-Goods Catalogue As the Dinner Hour Grew Near She Raged--So the Servants said--Whenever the Telephone Rang "Jim Purdy, Taken the Day He Left for the Army" He Advertised the Fact that He was a Good Hater by Showing Callers at His Office His Barrel He Likes to Sit in the Old Swayback Swivel-Chair and Tell Us His Theory of the Increase in the Rainfall And Camped in the Office for Two Days, Looking for Jimmy Reverend Milligan Came in with a Church Notice A Desert Scorpion, Outcast by Society and Proud of it "He Made a Lot of Money and Blew it in" Went About Town with His Cigar Pointing Toward his Hat-Brim The Traveling Men on the Veranda Craned Their Necks to Watch Her Out of Sight Counting the Liars and Scoundrels and Double-Dealers and Villains Who Pass IN OUR TOWN I Scribes and Pharisees Ours is a little town in that part of the country called the West by those who live east of the Alleghanies, and referred to lovingly as "back East" by those who dwell west of the Rockies. It is a country town where, as the song goes, "you know everybody and they all know you," and the country newspaper office is the social clearing-house.