When I explained to my friend how the line passed south-easterly along the foot of the bluff, at the edge of the water, except where it dodged behind Hoflin’s headland, and then swept around the head of Smithtown Bay turning north-easterly toward Excelsior, “I declare,” he exclaimed, “there never was so romantic a place to locate an excursion railroad. So attractive a line ought surely to have been built. Why wasn’t it?” “Well,” I replied, “it was a case of infanticide.” “How was that?” he asked. “You’ve heard of treacherous midwives and nurses and murderous baby-farmers being subsidized to strangle an unwelcome cherub as soon as it is ushered into the world?” “Yes, was it a case of that sort?” “This infant was born healthy and vigorous after what might be called a rather protracted period of gestation—some thirty months. It had no less than twenty-one nurses in the shape of directors, which number was four times as great as it should have been and one over. “When there is such a mob of officials, the management usually devolves on a few of the more active and interested. That active minority in this case somehow either had from the first, or acquired, a greater interest in killing this enterprise to please its rivals than in carrying it out in good faith.” “How did the line run west of here?” he asked. “It passed northwesterly along the foot of the bluff yonder, on the top of which you see Smith’s stone house, then along the shore just in front of the “hermitage”, and a quarter of a mile beyond that it turned toward the west and cutting through the ridge of the peninsula that separates the upper lake from Halsteds Bay, it skirted the south shore of that bay, and thence bore in a generally westerly and northwesterly direction, through Minnetrista township to St. Boniface and thence to Watertown. “Halsteds bay itself is so secluded as to form practically a separate lake and a beautiful one too.” “Suppose we sail up along this shore,” said Ocheltree, “I am quite interested in the place.”