"The lots at the north and east were to be sold for high-class residences only. Those at the west were reserved for business houses. Behold the embryo Main street! Overlooking the park at the south was Blome's farm house, since metamorphosed into a tavern and barns for the stage horses. The last of the Blomes shook the dust of Bloomtown from his feet when Carter bought his interest in the hack line. Bill's grandfather had a farm adjoining Blome's land at the west; but Ezra Bowers, merchant prince and attorney-at-law," he said whimsically, "had to have a residence in the fashionable quarter, fronting the park. A little patch of the old farm is quite good enough for Mr. and Mrs. Ellis Hinton and their two sons, Jap and Jasper William." Jap caught Ellis's hand, a lump arising in his throat. Bill relieved the momentary tension by turning over another cut. A familiar face looked out at him from the grime of years. Ellis glanced at it and smiled. "It is a great thing, Jap, the birth of a town. Bloomtown was really never born. The stork dropped her when he was traveling for a friendly haven. For ten years she lay, just as she fell, without visible signs of life. About twenty families existed, somehow. They had pigs, chickens and garden truck, and to all intents they would go on existing till the last trump. "One day I went out into the country to attend a sale. Boys, I was never so well pleased with a day's work as I was with that day's jaunt. I heard the most masterly bit of eloquence that ever came from the lips of an auctioneer. The man had the crowd hypnotized. He even sold me an accordion, a thing I was born to hate. The fact that it was wind-broken and rattly never occurred to me until I woke up, after he had done. Then I went to him and said: "'You an auctioneer! You should be in the Halls of Justice, telling the people how to interpret their laws.' "The idea struck him. He came into town with me and we talked the matter over. He was easily the best known and most liked man in the county. It was then that the political bug stung our good friend, Wat Harlow. Wat moved his family to town and soon he had a decent habitation. He stimulated a rain of paint and a hail of shingle nails. He prodded the older inhabitants to an era of wooden pavements and stone crossings. Bill's grandfather objected, because he said it cut down the sale of rubber hip-boots; but Wat's eloquence was the key to fit anything that tried to lock the wheels of progress. He did more than that. He brought Jim Blanke from Leesburg to start a decent drug store.