"Do you know that this is Decoration Day and a holiday?" "Is there anything a sub-editor does not know?" "Have you ever been to the Falls of Wabeno?" "No." "And you call yourself a true citizen of St. Etienne? Come with me and see the populace chew gum amid scenes of natural beauty." "I thought we were going to agitate civic reform." "We'll agitate as we go along. Come, Ellery, it's a superb day. I feel like the bursting buds. Let's get out." "My dear Dick," said Norris, "the trouble with you is that you never want to do anything; you always want to do something else. I begin to think that there are compensations to a man in having fate hold his nose to the grindstone. He learns persistence, willy-nilly." "Stop your growling. Up, William, up, and quit your galley-proof. I am willing to bet that my flashes in the pan will do things before I am through." "I dare swear they will get way ahead of my grubbing," Ellery rejoined, slamming his desk. "Come, I'll go with you." On the southern outskirts of the city lay a park where art had done no more than retouch nature. Here a placid stream suddenly transformed itself into an imposing waterfall, plunging with roars over a rocky cliff, and sending its spray whirling high in air to paint a hundred illusive rainbows amid outstretching tree-branches or against a somber background of stone. Dick left his motor near the brink of the cliff above the Falls and the two climbed down the steep bank, stopping now and again to yield to the fascination of rushing water and to snuff the fresh-flying mist as it swept into their faces. Caught in the gully below, the stream, which had suddenly contracted a habit of unruliness, tumbled onward under trees and through overhanging rocks until it joined the Mississippi a half-mile away. There were other people, hordes of them, tempted by May sunshine. "What is it, Ellery," Dick demanded, "what deep-seated idealism is it that draws these crowds to the most beautiful spot near town as soon as spring offers more than half an invitation?" "It certainly isn't a poetry that crops out in their clothes or in their conversation," Norris grumbled. "The staple remark seems to be, 'Gee, ain't it pretty?'" "You mustn't expect to see aristocracy here; this is too cheap, and too easy to reach. Your aristocrat prefers less beauty at greater effort and more cost. This is the place to touch elbows with the populace." They had climbed down the long winding steps by this time, and were leaning against the parapet of a small rustic bridge that crossed below the Falls. "Let's sit down on that bench," said Dick, "and let the sunshine trickle through the trees and through us, and feel the spray in our nostrils, and delight in hanging maidenhair ferns, and watch the girls go by--the girls in pink and blue dresses, each leaning on the arm of a swain who grins. It's vastly more fun than a fashionable parade."