"In those days of the early seventies, before the railroad came, when the town awoke in the morning and found a newly arrived covered waggon near a neighbour's house, it always meant that kin had come. If at school that day the children from the house of visitation bragged about their relatives, expatiating upon the power and riches that they left back East, the town knew that the visitors were ordinary kin; but if the children from the afflicted household said little about the visitors and evidently tried to avoid telling just who they were, then the town knew that the strangers were poor kin--probably some of "his folks"; for it was well understood that the women in this town all came from high connections 'back East' in Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa. Newcomers sometimes wondered how such a galaxy of princesses and duchesses and ladyships happened to marry so far beneath their station. "But the Dixons had no children, so when a covered waggon drove up to their place in the night, and a fussy, pussy little man with a dingy, stringy beard, appeared in the Dixons' back yard in the morning, looking after the horses hitched to the strange waggon; the town had to wait until the next week's issue of the _Statesman_ to get reliable news about their prospective fellow-citizen." With that "Aunt" Martha opened her scrapbook and read a clipping from the _Statesman_, under the head, "A Valuable Acquisition to Our City." It ran: "It has been many months since we have been favoured with a call from so cultured and learned a gentleman as the Hon. Andoneran P. Balderson, late of Quito, Hancock County, Iowa, who has finally determined to settle in our midst. Cramped by the irritating conventionalities of an effete civilisation, Colonel Balderson comes among us for that larger freedom and wider horizon which his growing powers demand. He comes with the ripened experience of a jurist, a soldier, and a publicist, and, when transportation facilities have been completed between this and the Missouri River, Judge Balderson will bring to our little city his magnificent law library; but until then he will be found over the Elite Oyster Bay, where he will be glad to welcome clients and others. "Having participated in the late War of the Rebellion, as captain in Company G of Colonel Jennison's famous and invincible army of the border, Colonel Balderson will give special attention to pension matters. He also will set to work to obtain a complete set of abstracts, and will be glad to give advice on real-estate law and the practice of eminent domain, to which subject he has given deep study. All business done with neatness and despatch.